THE    CLANKING 
OF    CHAINS 


BRINSLEY  MAcNAMARA 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO       i 


j 


s       u 
\J 


presented  to  the 
UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
SAN  DIEGO 

by 

Tom  Ham 


THE   CLANKING 
OF  CHAINS 

A  STORY  OF  SINN  FEIN 


BY 

BRINSLEY  MACNAMARA 

Author  of  "The  Valley  of  the  Squinting  Windows" 


NEW  YORK 

BRENTANO'S 

PUBLISHERS 


COPYRIGHT,   1919,   BY 
BRENTANO'S 


All  Rights  Reserved 


PRINTED  IN  U.  S.  A. 


TO 

A.  C 

WHO  CAME   WITH    FLOWERS 


Was  it  for  this  the  Wild  Geese  spread 
The  gray  wing  upon  every  tide? 
For  this  that  all  that  blood  was  shedf 
For  this  Edward  Fitzgerald  died, 
And  Robert  Entmett  and  Wolfe  Tone, 
All  that  delirium  of  the  brave? 
Romantic  Ireland's  dead  and  gone, 
'Tis  with  O'Leary  in  the  grave. 

—  W.  B.  YEATS. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 
ROBERT    EMMET   IN    BALLYCULLEN     ....         1 

CHAPTER  II 
MEN  AND  THINGS 13 

CHAPTER  III 

FURTHER    REALITIES      ...    &    K    >     ....       26 

CHAPTER  IV 
MEN  or  YESTERDAY  AND  TO-DAY 36 

CHAPTER  V 
A  POINT  AT  ISSUE 49 

CHAPTER  VI 
A  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHER 62 

CHAPTER  VII 
A  REBEL    : 76 

CHAPTER  VIII 
INCIDENTS  or  THE  DANCE 91 

CHAPTER  IX 

THE  URGE  OF  ULSTER 102 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  X 
A  GREAT  MEETING 112 

CHAPTER  XI 

ASPECTS  or  IRISH  SOLDIERING     .     .     .     .     .     .     125 

CHAPTER  XII 
MICHAEL'S  DREAM 137 

CHAPTER  XIII 
1914 151 

CHAPTER  XIV 
THE  DARK  YEARS 167 

CHAPTER  XV 
EASTER    WEEK,    1916 180 

CHAPTER  XVI 
VICTORIES 192 

CHAPTER  XVII 

SINN  FEIN  AND  SOLUTION .     201 

CHAPTER  XVIII 
THE  MATERIAL  DEFENCE .     .     217 

CHAPTER  XIX 
AN  ENEMY  OF  His  PEOPLE     ......     233 

CHAPTER  XX 

EXODUS  246 


THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

CHAPTER  I 

ROBERT   EMMET  IN   BALLYCULLEN 

THE  little  room  at  the  back  of  the  Court- 
house in  Ballycullen  was  animated  un- 
usually and  a  number  of  young  men  and 
women  were  hurrying  up  the  short  stairway  from 
the  street  door.  It  was  Sunday  evening  and 
each  seemed  to  wear  an  air  of  business  curiously 
out  of  keeping  with  the  time  and  the  place,  for 
this  was  the  day  of  deadness  and  no  effort,  be- 
yond that  of  the  tongue,  in  Ballycullen,  and  this 
little  room  was  musty  for  lack  of  the  warmth  of 
human  industry  and  occupation. 

It  was  true  that  every  Friday  of  the  year,  with 
the  frequent  addition  of  Fair  days,  this  place  dis- 
played a  certain  connection  with  life,  for  it  was 
then  the  Office  of  the  Bank  Manager  who  came 
over  from  Castleconnor  with  his  Clerk,  these  two 
hirelings  of  Mammon  always  looking  very  im- 
portant and  grand  as  they  drove  up  through  Bal- 
lycullen about  twelve  o'clock  in  the  day.  Mr. 
Alexander  Waddell,  the  Manager,  who  always 

i 


2         THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

sat,  well  muffled  even  in  Summer,  on  the  left  side 
of  the  car,  was  a  white-haired,  wide-moustached, 
successful  Orangeman.  He  wore  a  half  tall  hat 
and  a  Masonic  tie-pin  prominently  displayed. 
A  sudden,  complete  impression  of  the  man  was 
that  of  the  conventional  caricature  of  a  villainous 
Irish  landlord  of  the  early  "  eighties  "  of  the  past 
century.  Mr.  St.  John  Marlowe,  the  Clerk,  was 
a  young  man  with  a  beardless,  characterless  face. 
He  always  wore  an  inane,  superior  smile.  In 
Castleconnor  he  was  a  ladies'  man  who  played 
golf  and  tennis,  and  in  Ballycullen  he  served  as  a 
shining  example  for  the  aspiring  fops  of  the 
locality.  They  bought  the  same  kind  of  clothes 
and  wore  them  in  exactly  the  same  way,  mostly 
after  tremendous  effort,  and,  although  they  had 
never  heard  him  speak,  since  he  never  spoke  to 
any  of  them,  they  often  attempted  to  converse 
with  the  drawl  which  they  fondly  fancied  must 
be  one  superior  aspect  of  the  man  who  wore  the 
air  and  the  clothes  of  St.  John  Marlowe. 

"  There's  the  Bank,  begad,"  the  shopkeepers 
of  Ballycullen  would  exclaim,  and  immediately 
they  would  run  into  their  shops  to  fumble  for 
their  last  halfpence  in  the  greasy  tills.  A  little 
later  they  would  go  slipping  up  to  this  room 
where  the  bank  manager  and  his  clerk  would 
be  sitting  behind  a  table  looking  very  prosperous 
and  reliable  with  the  little  piles  of  gold  and  sil- 


ROBERT  EMMET  IN  BALLYCULLEN  3 

ver,  the  sheaves  of  notes,  the  papers  and  account 
books  before  them.  The  shopkeepers  of  Bally- 
cullen  would  never  proceed  here  in  couples  or  in 
companies,  but  each  would  wait  nervously  until 
his  immediate  neighbour  had  gone  before  him 
or  else  take  an  exciting  opportunity  of  running  up 
there  before  his  neighbour.  Even  as  the  ac- 
quisition of  the  money  had  been  a  thing  done 
secretly,  furtively,  evasively,  the  putting  away  of 
it  must  needs  be  invested  with  a  certain  amount  of 
mystery.  It  was  like  going  to  confession  be- 
cause, for  the  most  part,  this  acknowledgement  of 
possession  threw  them  back  inevitably  upon  re- 
membrance of  the  means  by  which  they  had  come 
into  possession.  Friday  was  market  day  in  Bal- 
lycullen  and  an  addition  to  the  shopkeepers  was 
represented  by  the  fowl-men  and  egg-men  and 
farmers  who  dribbled  out  occasionally  from  the 
ragged  crowd  which  represented  the  market,  and 
went  up  to  the  Bank,  too.  These  in  turn  were  re- 
inforced on  Fair  days  by  graziers  and  grabbers 
from  all  parts  of  the  County  Meath  and  cattle- 
dealers  and  pig-jobbers  from  all  parts  of  Ireland. 
Always,  however,  with  that  elderly,  owlish  man 
sitting  there  behind  the  money  on  the  table  and 
the  sleek  clerk  still  smiling  inanely  as  he  manipu- 
lated books  and  papers,  there  seemed  to  hang 
about  this  primitive  scene  of  financial  industry 
an  odour  of  decay. 


4         THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

But  now  the  scene  it  held  seemed  to  bring  the 
place  into  intimate  and  joyous  connection  with 
life.  The  young  men  and  women  were  laughing 
or  chatting  gaily  as  they  came  up  the  stairway. 
Each  held  a  bundle  of  clothes,  a  little  box  of  some 
kind  which  might  contain  anything,  a  looking 
glass  or  else  some  piece  of  material  which  might 
be  used  somehow  in  stage  decoration.  The  indi- 
viduals, with  the  little  burdens  they  carried,  ap- 
peared each  as  a  distinct  contribution  to  the  gen- 
eral effect,  suddenly  created  in  the  room  by  their 
unusual  appearance  here.  It  was  not  until  the 
young  men  had  thrown  off  their  overcoats  and  the 
young  girls  their  cloaks  or  wraps  that  their  col- 
lective purpose  began  slowly  to  be  apparent. 
The  bundles  were  untied,  the  boxes  were  opened, 
each  bit  of  theatrical  stuff  began  to  find  its  place. 
All  the  people  in  the  room  began  to  make  them- 
selves up  as  if  for  a  play,  the  girls  going  behind 
little  screens  at  the  side  distant  from  the  young 
men  who,  despite  this  particular  protection,  re- 
mained modestly  turned  away  as  if  to  insure 
greater  privacy. 

Another  young  man  now  hurried  in.  He  was 
tall,  dark  and  slight  with  some  suggestion  at 
least  of  the  face  and  figure  of  the  idealist.  This 
was  Michael  Dempsey  who  immediately  ap- 
peared as  the  commanding  personality  of  the 
group  for  the  other  young  men  turned  round  at- 


ROBERT  EMMET  IN  BALLYCULLEN  5 

tentively  upon  his  entrance  and  even  the  girls 
came  from  behind  the  screens  with  some  of  their 
stage  garments  held  veilwise  around  them. 

"  Let  us  have  a  run  through  for  words  while 
we're  making  up,"  he  said.  Then  he  took  off 
his  coat  and  waistcoat,  his  collar  and  tie  and, 
rolling  up  his  sleeves,  went  at  his  face,  with  one 
of  the  sticks  of  grease-paint  which  had  just  been 
brought  in  one  of  the  little  boxes,  before  one  of 
the  looking  glasses  which  had  accompanied  them. 
From  all  sides  of  the  room  came  spoken  lines 
which  very  soon  began  to  assume  the  coherence  of 
dramatic  dialogue  but  which,  lacking  for  the 
moment  the  accompanying  illusion  of  the  stage, 
did  not  suddenly  suggest  the  speakers  in  any 
scene  beyond  that  of  the  present.  Yet  the  lines 
which  Michael  Dempsey  spoke,  perhaps  from  the 
intensity  with  which  he  filled  them,  perhaps  be- 
cause they  were  lines  of  beauty  which  had  once 
been  spoken  greatly  by  the  man  he  was  supposed 
to  represent,  began  more  immediately  to  remove 
him  from  the  deathy  reality  of  this  little  musty 
room.  It  was  a  play  about  Robert  Emmet  and 
Sara  Curran  that  the  Ballycullen  Dramatic  Class 
were  going  to  produce  and  Michael  Dempsey  was 
to  appear  in  the  part  of  Robert  Emmet.  He 
seemed  to  feel  intensely  the  dignity  of  the  imper- 
sonation which  was  demanded  of  him.  His  in- 
tonation of  the  lines  seemed  to  hold  a  high  sen- 


6         THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

ousness  which  was  also  a  little  more  slightly 
apparent  in  the  lines  spoken  by  the  girl  who  was 
to  play  the  part  of  Sara  Curran  from  behind  the 
screen  where  she  still  remained  dressing.  In  the 
speech  of  the  others  there  were  numerous  blunders 
and  the  grandiose  language  was  frequently 
marred  by  illiterate  pronunciation.  But  there 
was  a  certain  eagerness,  an  amount  of  enthusi- 
asm which  gave  the  quaint  proceeding  the 
atonement  of  life.  Even  as  they  rehearsed  thus 
they  were  hurrying  with  their  preparations  and, 
very  soon  would  be  ready  for  the  stage.  The  cos- 
tumes for  the  play,  hired  from  an  old  woman  who 
carried  on  this  business  in  a  Dublin  tenement, 
were  variously  anachronistic,  but  even  the  pos- 
sible humour  of  these  defects  removed  itself  dis- 
tantly when  one  suddenly  remembered  again  the 
purpose  of  this  little  band.  To-night  they  were 
going  to  perform  this  drama  about  Robert  Emmet 
and  Sara  Curran  in  Ballycullen  and  a  certain 
sense  of  their  own  bravery  successfully  blotted 
from  their  minds  such  minor  occasions  of  self- 
consciousness.  Their  fathers  and  mothers  would 
have  come  to  see  them  on  the  stage  as  well  as  all 
the  boys  and  girls  with  whom  they  were  intimate, 
old  men  too,  who  through  the  miracle  of  patriot- 
ism, still  echoing  in  their  hearts  from  the  songs 
of  drunken  ballad  singers  at  fairs,  knew  well  the 
story  of  that  dead  man  who  had  loved  that  dead 


ROBERT  EMMET  IN  BALLYCULLEN  7 

woman  so  long  ago,  and  loved  Ireland,  too,  with 
a  grandeur  surpassing  the  common  loves  of  men. 
To  the  intelligentzia  of  Dublin  this  play  might 
not  appear  very  striking  drama.  "  Melodramatic 
propaganda  "  would  probably  be  their  description 
of  it,  but  here  in  Ballycullen  it  was  as  one  of  the 
great  Greek  tragedies  of  old  in  Athens.  For  all 
his  soul  might  have  dwindled  sadly,  in  very  truth 
what  man  was  there  amongst  them  at  all  had  not 
spoken  out  of  his  dream  sometime  of  dying  for 
Ireland  ?  Of  how,  maybe,  as  he  went  down  some 
grass-grown  boreen  where  the  hawthorn  blossoms 
in  Maytime  fell  and  were  blown  on  a  light  wind 
like  fragrant,  tinted  snow,  and  for  all  its  rich 
colour  of  the  fields  at  sunset  the  shadow  over 
all  had  seemed  to  him  the  deadly  shadow  of  Eng- 
land. And  then  he  had  spoken  to  the  girl  walk- 
ing by  his  side  of  "  fighting  the  bloody  British 
Government,"  of  "  dying  from  a  bullet  in  some  re- 
bellion or  another,"  of  being  "  murdered,  maybe 
in  jail,  the  way  they  murdered  Wolfe  Tone." 
"And  what  would  you  do  then?"  Then  there  had 
come,  probably,  a  little  strained,  beseeching  look 
into  the  eyes  of  the  girl  as  she  put  her  soft  arm 
about  his  neck,  her  brown,  troubled  head  upon  his 
shoulder,  and  sobbed  her  request  that  he  would 
not  go.  And  he  had  not  gone,  only  marrying  the 
girl  a  little  later  and  wondering  ever  since  at  the 
"  wildness  "  of  himself  and  he  a  young  fellow. 


8         JHE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

No  Irish  dramatist  had  seen  this  material  and  yet 
it  was  the  complete  expression  in  tragi-comedy  of 
Ireland  —  the  Ireland  of  all  the  dreams  and  all 
the  songs  and  all  the  dying. 

Many  a  young  man  would  be  behaving  just 
like  this  after  to-night's  performance  and  both  the 
young  women  and  the  old  would  be  weeping  little, 
silent  tears  as  they  tried  to  remember  or  to  picture 
themselves  in  the  disquieting,  in  fact  desperate, 
position  of  Sara  Curran.  But  over  all  the  audi- 
ence, over  its  face  as  one  man,  would  be  clouding 
a  curious  mixture  of  expression,  combative,  satiri- 
cal, critical,  comical,  tragical  really  in  its  full 
significance. 

Already  Michael  Dempsey  had  taken  the 
Ballycullen  Dramatic  Class  onto  the  stage  and 
they  were  all  stiffly  awaiting  the  rise  of  the  cur- 
tain. One  of  the  girls,  she  who  was  to  play  the 
part  of  Anne  Devlin,  complained  of  a  little  faint- 
ness  and  someone  rushed  to  get  her  a  bottle  of 
minerals.  The  man  who  was  to  play  Michael 
Dwyer  brought  out  a  bottle  of  whiskey  from  his 
pocket  and  took  a  good  long  drink.  Then  the 
little  drop-curtain  which  had  been  so  badly 
painted  by  Ambrose  Donohue,  the  handy  man, 
screeched  upward  and  the  play  began. 

One  might  have  seen  immediately  that,  al- 
though possessing  the  curious,  intimate  connec- 
tion with  Irish  life  already  suggested,  it  was  made 


ROBERT  EMMET  IN  BALLYCULLEN  9 

distant  from  Irish  life  by  several  focusses  of  un- 
reality. It  possessed  no  verisimilitude  as  a  pic- 
ture of  the  period,  and,  in  the  second  place,  was 
no  transcript  of  life,  inasmuch  as  the  method  of 
presentation  was  as  far  removed  from  realism  as 
it  is  possible  for  anything  to  be.  And  yet  it  did 
not  appear  as  any  kind  of  spontaneous  romance; 
one  could  not  call  it  a  folk  play.  The  lines  were 
spoken  haltingly  with  a  poor  accent  which  did  not 
fully  express  their  meaning.  The  entrances  and 
exits  and  the  situations  generally  were  most 
crudely  effected.  Yet  were  the  people  gripped  for 
no  other  reason  than  because  it  was  a  play  about 
Robert  Emmet.  Indeed  Michael  Dempsey  need 
not  have  gone  to  such  pains  to  give  a  great  per- 
formance. Merely  to  have  stood  there  on  the  very 
middle  of  the  stage  in  his  top  boots  with  gold 
tassels,  white  trousers  and  black  cut-away  coat, 
his  arms  folded  and  a  lock  of  hair  brushed  down 
upon  his  forehead  would  have  been  quite  suffi- 
cient. In  fact,  from  one  aspect  of  Ballycullen's 
point  of  view,  the  whole  thing  was  quite  unneces- 
sary. The  drunken  ballad  singers  had  told  them 
all  they  wanted  to  know  about  Robert  Emmet  and 
this  was  exactly  how  they  had  always  seen  Robert 
Emmet  dressed  up  in  a  picture.  Into  their  dull 
minds  was  crowding  a  sudden  warfare  of  con- 
flicting thoughts.  "  The  Lord  save  us  now,  but 
wasn't  Robert  Emmet  the  grand  young  man  en- 


10       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

tirely,  and  wasn't  it  terrible  sad  about  himself 
and  his  sweetheart,  the  poor  thing?  " 

"  The  cheek  of  Michael  Dempsey,  anyway, 
made  up  like  the  picture  of  Robert  Emmet  in 
Marcus  Flynn's  parlour  when  you  might  see  him 
any  day  working  for  the  bare  life  in  Marcus 
Flynn's  shop.  If  it  was  some  kind  of  laughable 
'  farsh '  that  he  thought  of  getting  up,  but 
'  Robert  Emmet,'  be  the  holy  fly ! " 

"  Weren't  the  English  now  the  walking  devils 
to  go  cut  the  head  of  a  great  hero  like  that  in 
Thomas  Street  in  Dublin?  " 

"  Why  to  hear  my  bold  Michael  going 
through  the  speech  in  the  dock  you'd  think 
nearly  that  he'd  have  the  cheek  sometime  to  make 
a  speech  of  his  own.  Now  if  it  was  Marcus 
Flynn  himself,  a  good,  solid  man  with  a  stake  in 
the  country,  that  you  saw  getting  up  on  the  stage 
and  speechifying  it  would  be  something,  but  a 
brat  of  a  shop-boy,  mind  you,  having  them  kind 
of  notions." 

"  Musha,  there  must  be  a  great  reward  to  the 
souls  of  them  that  dies  for  Ireland  like  that  poor 
fellow  and  Sara  Curran  his  girl  so  fond  of  him ! " 

"  The  cheek  of  a  lad  like  that  wanting  to 
talk  about  Ireland,  but  sure  he's  always  at  it  in 
the  shop  even.  Why,  I  declare  to  God,  he'd 
sicken  you,  and  one  only  running  in  and  out  to 
buy  an  ounce  of  tobacco  or  a  box  of  matches." 


ROBERT  EMMET  IN  BALLYCULLEN  11 

It  was  thus  and  thus  that  the  fume  of  expres- 
sion arose  in  the  intervals  following  the  succes- 
sive falls  of  the  curtain.  In  this  Ireland  of  a 
late  little  day  the  glory  of  Robert  Emmet's  sacri- 
fice was  less  to  the  mind  of  Ballycullen  than  its 
anxiety  to  defeat  the  poor,  struggling  soul  of 
Michael  Dempsey,  the  shop-boy  in  Marcus 
Flynn's.  It  was  the  slight  offense  that  the  per- 
sonality of  Michael  Dempsey  represented  to  them 
which  held  the  eyes  of  their  minds,  for  already 
they  hated  him  because  it  seemed  to  be  his  en- 
deavour to  lift  himself  beyond  them. 

Behind  the  curtain,  during  the  last  interval, 
another  aspect  of  the  reality  which  had  been 
created  by  his  sudden  bringing  of  the  ideals  of 
Robert  Emmet  into  contact  with  the  realism  of 
Ballycullen  now  held  the  young  men  and  girls. 
Michael  Dempsey  was  chatting  with  Lena  Con- 
way  who  was  taking  the  part  of  Sara  Curran  in 
the  play.  Lena  was  another  slave  of  the  counter 
in  Thomas  Cooney's  shop  a  little  way  further 
down  the  main  street.  She  was  a  pretty  girl  with 
bright,  romantic  eyes  and  rich,  dark  hair.  It  was 
said,  not  without  a  touch  of  envy  in  the  remark, 
always  that  she  had  the  best  figure  of  any  girl  in 
Ballycullen  and  that  she  dressed  the  best.  Some- 
one who  had  once  seen  a  play  of  the  same  name 
in  Dublin  had  bestowed  upon  her  the  nickname 
of  "  Mirandolina  "  and  it  had  stuck  consistently, 


investing  her  with  a  kind  of  romantic  glamour  in 
Ballycullen.  The  refinement  of  beauty  was  in 
her  musically  lengthened  name  —  Mirandolina 
Conway.  Somehow  it  made  one  think  of  music 
and  laughter  and  a  girl  dancing  for  love  of  life 
in  a  place  of  gloom.  Now  Michael  Dempsey  was 
looking  down  into  her  eyes  even  as  he  had  looked, 
in  the  part  of  Robert  Emmet,  into  the  eyes  of  her 
as  Sara  Curran  a  few  moments  before.  .  .  . 
It  seemed  suddenly  as  if  that  long  scene  upon  the 
stage  had  been  extended  into  this  scene.  .  .  . 
A  mist  of  fondness  seemed  to  hang  around  them. 
Then  Michael  began  to  speak  for  the  first  time 
to  her  hearing  in  deep,  passionate  tones.  But, 
passing  the  love  of  any  woman,  his  talk  was  of 
Ireland.  It  was  like  the  talk  of  Robert  Emmet, 
but  they  were  his  own  words  he  was  using  now. 

"  And  surely,  Michael,  you  wouldn't  leave  me 
and  go  give  up  your  life  for  Ireland,"  she  said. 

It  was  in  this  moment,  and  really  for  the  first 
time,  that  he  stood  apart  from  the  life  which  had 
always  succeeded  in  crushing  him  into  itself,  be- 
cause the  answer  he  spoke  was  not  quite  the  same 
that  had  been  given  to  this  very  question  by  suc- 
cessive generations  of  loutish  lovers  as  they 
walked  with  their  girls  on  May  evenings  along  the 
grass-grown  boreens. 

Just  then  they  were  called  to  appear  in  the  last 
act  of  the  play  before  the  sweating  audience  of 
Ballycullen. 


CHAPTER  II 

MEN  AND  THINGS 

NEXT  day,  as  he  moved  behind  the  counter 
of  Marcus  Flynn's  grocery  establishment, 
a  thousand  tremendous  feelings  struggled 
towards  realization  in  the  soul  of  Michael  Demp- 
sey.  The  sound  of  applause  still  seemed  to  be 
ringing  in  his  ears.  .  .  .  And  it  was  in  ap- 
preciation of  his  endeavours  that  Ballycullen  had 
let  out  of  itself  that  great  burst  of  applause,  that 
almost  tearful  and  wondering  appreciation  of  him 
and  her  as  they  stood  within  the  wonder  of  one  an- 
other's gaze  upon  the  stage.  .  .  .  Even  dur- 
ing the  short  time  of  the  play's  passage  he  had 
became  almost  mentally  metamorphosed.  "  Be- 
gad, he  was  full  of  himself  now,"  to  use  a  phrase 
out  of  the  slang  of  Ballycullen.  The  words  of 
Robert  Emmet  which  he  had  spoken  were  being 
remembered  by  him  somehow  as  if  they  had  been 
words  of  his  own  expression.  It  suddenly  seemed 
as  if  he  stood  for  in  his  own  person,  with  regard 
to  Ballycullen,  what  Robert  Emmet  had  stood  for 
in  his  person  with  regard  to  Ireland  and  that  the 

13 


14       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

words  of  the  part  he  had  acted  still  continued  into 
reality  signifying  the  same  willingness  to  sacri- 
fice. 

The  two  causes  which,  in  his  own  mind,  seemed 
to  lend  reality  to  this  notion  were  the  fact  that 
last  night  he  had  fallen  in  love  with  Mirandolina 
Conway  and  that  the  part  he  had  played  had 
given  him  the  opportunity  of  expressing  in  public 
ideas  which  had  long  been  burning  his  secret 
heart,  a  side  of  himself  which  was  well  hidden 
indeed  although  the  reason  for  its  existence  had 
once  been  a  daylight  spectacle  in  Ballycullen. 
There  were  times  of  course  when  he  remembered 
his  father,  Andrew  Dempsey,  the  famous  Parnel- 
lite  who  had  once  owned  the  fine  shop  which  was 
now  the  property  of  Thomas  Cooney,  but  who  had 
lost  it  through  his  devotion  to  "  The  Cause  "  and 
the  fact  that  he  had  followed  Parnell,  keeping  in 
his  own  rapidly  dwindling  way  of  business  sym- 
bolic company  with  the  ruin  of  that  heroic  figure. 
The  hopelessness  of  his  father's  ending  was  still 
reflected  in  his  mother  and  the  sister,  for  when 
Andrew  Dempsey  had  been  finally  broken  by  de- 
votion to  his  dream  all  three  of  them  had  re- 
treated to  a  little  thatched  cottage  on  the  outskirts 
of  Ballycullen.  .  .  .  Because  he  had  had  to  be 
a  breadwinner  from  his  earliest  years  it  was  not  a 
little  strange  that  the  obsession  of  his  father  should 
have  appeared  in  him  so  strongly,  with  such 


MEN  AND  THINGS  15 

powers  of  influence  upon  his  young  mind.  But  it 
was  true  that,  in  the  one  passable  room  of  the 
little  cottage,  the  poor  room,  with  the  bubble  win- 
dow which  caused  such  a  crooked  view  of  King 
John's  Castle,  the  famous  ruin  which  had 
brought  more  than  one  batch  of  Antiquaries  to 
Ballycullen,  after  his  long  day  of  drudgery  in  the 
shop  Michael  fed  himself  by  candle-light  upon 
the  more  ferocious  portions  of  the  history  of  Ire- 
land. His  little  library  of  well-worn  volumes 
seemed  to  stand  for  a  certain  snatched,  secret 
culture  which  had  been  always  alien  to  the  spirit 
of  Ballycullen  for  the  soul  of  Ballycullen  was  un- 
equal even  to  great  hatred,  and  it  was  the  lonely 
creed  of  a  great  hatred  that  his  books  had  taught 
Michael  Dempsey.  Here  in  the  quiet  evenings  he 
would  be  alone  with  all  the  dead  who  had  died  for 
Ireland  and  through  their  company  he  would  enter 
into  a  fierce  spiritual  ecstasy  which,  to  common 
eyes,  might  easily  appear  as  mere  savage  hatred 
of  England,  but  which  also  contained  in  itself 
its  own  atonement.  Yet  it  was  queer  to  think  of 
some  of  the  books  which  had  wrought  the  per- 
sonality of  this  room,  causing  him,  by  an  urgent 
and  oppressive  sense  of  all  the  shadows  which  it 
housed,  to  feed  his  mind  down  one  byway  upon 
the  darkness  of  John  Mitchel's  mind,  a  darkness 
almost  of  the  very  grave,  as  his  only  way  of  re- 
lease from  the  mean,  crushing  gloom  of  Bally- 


16       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

cullen.  His  mind  had  easily  formed  his  taste 
for  this  kind  of  reading,  for,  even  as  a  boy,  he 
would  turn  from  other  boys  at  their  games  to  read 
lengthy,  illustrated  accounts  of  dead  Fenians, 
with  dark  looks  and  dark  beards,  in  "  The 
Weekly  Freeman."  He  used  to  pour  over  these 
for  long  hours  with  wise,  tearful  eyes. 

Later,  about  the  time  his  father  died  and  he 
had  come  to  work  in  Marcus  Flynn's,  the  little 
paper  formerly  known  as  "  The  United  Irish- 
man "  had  changed  its  name  to  "  Sinn  Fein  "  and 
Michael  bought  it  every  week  from  old  Mr.  Mil- 
lington,  the  ex-peeler,  who  sold  notepaper,  news- 
papers and  sweets.  At  first  he  had  found  it  some- 
what difficult  to  understand.  It  seemed  to  be  so 
urgently  of  the  present,  its  young  hope  blowing 
fragrant  as  a  sudden  rose,  having  none  of  the 
musty  odour  of  ransacked  files,  but  clean  from  its 
undying  flowers  on  the  graves  of  the  dead  who 
had  died  for  Ireland.  Very  soon  it  seemed  to 
open  to  his  eyes  a  brighter  vision  of  Ireland  in  the 
days  to  be.  It  looked  forward  gladly  to  hope  of 
the  future  rather  than  sadly  backward  to  the  de- 
feat of  the  past.  It  suggested  many  practical 
means  by  which  Ireland  could  enter  into  this  fu- 
ture; it  endeavoured  to  adjust  its  ideas  to  facts 
and  institutions  of  the  day,  language,  industry, 
development  of  mineral  wealth,  railways,  local 
Government.  It  often  seemed  so  certain  to 


MEN  AND  THINGS  17 

Michael  that  one  could  have  this  lovely  Ireland  as 
an  immediate  future  if  all  these  things  were  done 
that  "  Sinn  Fein  "  suggested,  entreated,  almost 
commanded,  from  Thursday  to  Thursday.  It 
would  be  revenge  for  the  past.  In  his  trembling 
anxiety  to  realize  the  future  there  was,  as  a  curi- 
ous aspect  of  the  psychology  of  this  new  creed 
called  "  Sinn  Fein,"  an  intense,  dependant 
anxiety  upon  him  also  to  be  remembering  the  past. 
Hence  the  unchanging  quality  of  his  reading  in 
his  lonely  room  in  the  quiet  evenings.  Often, 
after  some  Thursday  night  when  the  current 
number  of  his  beloved  paper  would  have  helped 
him  to  vision  the  future  more  brightly  in  contrast 
with  the  intensely  remembered  dark  past,  he 
would  be  so  far  carried  out  of  himself  and  his 
realization  of  Ballycullen  as  to  attempt  next  day, 
at  the  risk  of  losing  his  job,  to  impress  some  of 
these  ideas  towards  the  well-being  of  Ireland 
upon  Marcus  Flynn.  A  strange  contrast  of  per- 
sonalities would  immediately  become  manifest. 
There  he  would  be,  the  poor  hard  working  shop- 
boy,  struggling  to  support  his  mother  and  sister 
and  yet  live  too  for  Ireland,  by  the  side  of  that 
solid,  ignorant  man  who,  quite  unable  to  realize 
that  he  had  a  country,  knew  Ballycullen  far  into 
the  last  byway  of  its  possibilities.  No  one  knew 
better  than  Michael  the  schemes  of  the  lowest  na- 
ture which  Marcus  embraced  to  enrich  himself. 


18       JHE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

Through  being  forced  to  remain  in  his  service  he 
was  a  party  to  all  this  but,  strangely  enough,  he 
seemed  unable  to  realize  it  in  its  full  relation  to 
himself.  The  visions  which  came  out  of  his 
room  seemed  to  overcast  even  this  dismal  reality. 
The  power  that  Marcus  stood  for  in  regard  to  his 
life  was  an  immense  something  beyond  which  a 
certain  aspect  of  realization  could  not  possibly 
extend.  There  would  be  Marcus  himself,  stand- 
ing hugely  at  his  own  door,  fully  impressive  to  his 
own  satisfaction  that  it  was  by  his  mercy  Michael 
was  enabled  to  put  a  crust  into  three  mouths.  He 
would  be  always  lounging  about  the  shop  like  this 
when  he  was  not  actively  engaged  in  superintend- 
ing such  little  tricks  of  his  trade  as  adulteration 
and  making  up  of  groceries  in  light  weight  quan- 
tities for  the  poor  people  whose  means  forced 
them  to  buy  the  necessities  of  life  from  him  in 
this  way. 

It  was  true  that  all  this  long  established  system 
of  mean  roguery  was  almost  atoned  for  by  one 
courageous  little  effort  on  the  part  of  Michael. 
This  was  the  notable  occasion  upon  which  he  had 
induced  his  employer  to  invest  in  a  stock  of  Irish 
manufactured  matches.  At  a  local  aeridheacht 
an  eloquent  speaker  from  Dublin  had  exhorted 
the  people  to  buy  only  Irish  manufactured  goods 
—  "  Irish  manufactured  matches,  for  instance," 
he  said.  After  much  persuasion  Marcus  became 


MEN  AND  THINGS  19 

slowly  convinced.  Well,  begad,  to  begin  with 
boxes  of  matches  would  not  do  much  harm  any- 
way and  even  if  he  did  not  make  as  much  out  of 
them,  who  knew  but  Irish  manufacture,  with  all 
these  fellows  going  about  the  country  preaching 
it,  might  get  to  be  fashionable  some  day  and  it 
would  be  just  as  well  to  have  one's  hand  in  in 
case  it  might.  Mebbe  Mickeen  Dempsey  was  not 
such  an  idiot  as  he  looked!  On  the  morning 
that  the  Irish  manufactured  matches  were  put  on 
sale,  he  was  more  greatly  filled  than  ever  with  a 
sense  of  his  own  national  importance.  Begad,  he 
was  doing  his  best  for  the  country  in  every  damn 
way  that  a  man  could  possibly  do  it,  a  big  sub- 
scriber to  "  The  Cause  "  always  and  now  of  a 
sudden  an  Irish  industrial  developer.  .  .  . 
Coming  in  for  the  means  of  a  smoke  on  their  way 
to  the  fields  the  dogged  farmers,  so  very  con- 
servative in  every  turn  of  their  thick  minds, 
seemed  to  regard  the  innovation  doubtfully. 
Their  first  thought,  naturally  springing  from 
their  primitive  reasoning,  was  that  here  appeared 
another  attempt  on  the  part  of  Marcus  Flynn  to 
give  them  bad  value  and  to  extortionate.  The 
English  manufactured  article,  which  they  called 
"  MacMahon's  Matches,"  was  a  bigger  box  and 
there  was  a  grand  picture  of  Marshal  MacMahon 
on  the  outside  and  he  was  what  you  might  call  a 
true  Irishman.  (This  subtle,  patriotic  touch  had 


20       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

been  given  the  article,  to  secure  a  large  sale  for 
it  in  Ireland,  by  the  astute  Englishmen  who  had 
put  it  upon  the  market.)  They  gave  expression 
to  their  opinions  upon  this  small  matter  as  they 
made  their  purchases  and  Marcus  regarded  them 
the  while  with  suppressed  and  gloomy  profanity. 
Next  day,  about  the  same  time,  as  he  stood  in  the 
very  same  place  to  realise  the  results  of  his  patri- 
otic endeavours,  one  man  after  another  came  in, 
his  pipe  unlit,  and  cursing  the  Irish  manufactured 
matches. 

"The  curse  of  hell  on  them  anyway!  I  never 
endured  such  persecution  as  striving  to  get  a 
smoke  and  the  bloody  things  going  out  every 
minute  I'd  light  them.  Give  us  a  box  of  matches 
that'll  light,  Mickeen,  for  the  honour  of  God! " 

It  was  the  things  which  Marcus  swore  when 
they  went  out  that  finally  reconciled  Michael  to 
the  counter-stroke  which  he  proposed.  It  was 
nothing  less  than  the  making  of  a  mixture  in 
equal  proportions  of  the  Irish  and  English  manu- 
factured matches  so  as  to  ensure  sale  of  the  pres- 
ent stock  of  Irish  manufactured  stuff  before  too 
bad  a  name  entirely  went  out  upon  it.  He  re- 
gretted fiercely  that  a  stock  of  empty  MacMahon 
match  boxes  could  not  be  ordered  and  so  end  im- 
mediately one  of  the  most  damnable  mistakes  he 
had  made  in  the  course  of  his  whole  business 
career. 


MEN  AND  THINGS  21 

The  incident  of  the  matches  passed  thus  with- 
out leaving  much  impression  upon  Michael.  He 
went  on  reading,  mostly  about  the  Ireland  of  yes- 
terday in  its  bearing  on  the  Ireland  of  to-morrow, 
without  fully  realising  the  Ireland  of  his  own  day 
or  causing  his  own  personality  to  bear  upon  it 
greatly.  His  mind  was  unable  to  grasp  Bally- 
cullen  as  the  microcosm  of  that  macrocosm.  After 
a  fashion  he  was  definitely  placed  in  the  life  of 
his  native  village.  The  housewives  of  the  dis- 
trict spoke  of  his  "off-handed  way"  when  they 
bought  their  groceries  from  him.  He  was  tol- 
erated by  their  husbands  and  sons  because  the 
wild  notions  which  clouded  him  from  daily  life 
constituted  a  bearable  contrast,  accentuating 
their  own  realism  and  solid  worth.  "Musha 
now,  he  was  his  father's  son,  a  foolish  idiot," 
they  all  said.  It  was  part  of  his  job  to  chat  them 
when  they  came  into  the  shop  with  their  ash- 
plants  held  horizontally  under  their  arms  or  to 
listen  patiently  as  they  talked  endlessly  about 
cattle  and  fairs  and  pigs  and  crops  and  land. 
They  accepted  their  nationality  as  they  accepted 
their  religion,  just  passively,  but  they  hated  to  be 
reminded  of  it  to  the  extent  of  anyone  suggesting 
courses  of  self-sacrifice  more  in  agreement  with 
its  tradition  than  the  ways  of  their  lives.  "Ire- 
land or  that  kind  of  madness"  was  not  for  them. 
There  was  nothing  they  had  greater  contempt  for 


22       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

than  the  man  who  talked  about  doing  good  for 
Ireland.  And  the  intention  seemed  to  creep,  just 
a  little  too  frequently  into  the  talk  of  Michael. 
They  would  be  compelled  to  call  him  to  attention. 

"  Musha,  what  in  the  name  of  God,  man,  did 
you  ever  do  for  Ireland?" 

Puzzled  a  little  as  to  the  meaning  of  it  all, 
Michael  would  retreat  for  comfort  to  the  current 
issue  of  "Sinn  Fein"  hidden  behind  two  Jacob's 
biscuit  tins  at  the  back  of  the  counter.  Then  the 
sergeant  of  Ballycullen,  Sergeant  Leonard,  would 
be  coming  into  the  shop  to  talk  about  the  splen- 
did manhood  of  "The  Force",  the  security  of  a 
job  under  the  Crown  and  the  greatness  of  the 
British  Empire. 

"The  Lord  save  us,"  he  would  say,  for  about 
the  tenth  time  on  the  same  day,  "  they're  a  great 
people,  the  British.  Look  it,  when  I  think  of 
the  hugeness  of  the  power  they've  built  up,  why 
it's  something  terrific,  so  it  is.  Sure,  there  isn't  a 
sensible  little  nation  under  the  sun  but's  breaking 
its  heart  near  to  get  to  be  an  integral  portion  of 
the  British  Empire.  Would  you  believe  that 
now?  Well,  that's  a  fact.  Of  course  the  only 
foolish  country  in  the  world  as  usual  is  poor  ould 
Ireland  and  it's  me  that  knows  it.  Sure,  I  spent 
the  greater  part  of  my  service  in  attending  politi- 
cal meetings  all  over  the  country.  It  was  for  dis- 
tinguished service  at  them  that  I  got  the  three 


MEN  AND  THINGS  23 

gold  stripes  that  you  now  see  on  my  arm.  Sure, 
I  could  write  a  book  of  recollections,  for  there 
isn't  a  great  speech  of  the  past  25  years  that  I'm 
not  after  hearing  or  a  successful  orator,  of  no 
matter  what  political  brand,  that  I'm  not  after 
seeing.  Aye,  every  one  of  them  able  to  set  crowds 
mad  and  everyone  of  them  a  smart  fellow  and 
sure  I  often  thought  that  if  the  goms  they  used  to 
make  roar  and  bawl  for  Ireland  were  after  hear- 
ing as  many  of  them  as  I'm  after  hearing  they'd 
come  to  have  the  same  opinion  of  them  as  I  have. 
It'd  make  a  fellow  laugh  sometimes,  but  more 
times  it  would  not  be  so  laughable  at  all.  To  see 
fine  young  fellows  getting  set  astray  by  designing 
blackguards  instead  of  they  going  up  to  the  Depot 
to  get  trained  for  the  Force.  Why,  it  would 
nearly  go  to  your  heart,  so  it  would.  That  was 
my  ambition  always,  to  see  all  the  young  fellows 
in  Ireland  in  the  Force.  To  think  of  the  peace 
we'd  have  then  in  Ireland!  There'll  never  be 
peace  in  Ireland  until  we  have  done  with  oratory. 
If  there  was  no  fine  living  in  it  for  them  lads 
they'd  soon  give  up  speechifying  and  what  else. 
I  ask  you,  who  is  responsible  for  all  the  devilment 
in  Ireland  for  the  past  hundred  years  or  so?  I'm 
damn  sure  its  not  the  British  Government.  I 
thought  all  this  out  of  my  own  head  one  day  at 
a  meeting.  Why,  it's  the  only  thing  for  it,  says  I 
to  myself,  the  full  solution  to  a  difficulty  that  has 


24       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

almost  surpassed  the  ingenuity  of  man.  If  every 
meeting  began  to  be  composed  of  peelers  instead 
of  patriots,  d'ye  see?  Q.  U.  E.  D.  solved  just 
like  a  proposition  in  Euclid.  Ha!  Ha!  Ha! 
Give  up  asking  for  recruits  for  the  Army  from  a 
rebel  country  but  ask  for  recruits  for  the  R.  I.  C. 
instead.  Then  as  sure  as  the  sun  is  in  the  sky 
you'd  never  want  an  army  to  put  down  a  rebellion 
in  Ireland  again." 

On  the  day  after  the  play  the  Sergeant  was 
more  than  usually  eloquent  in  his  blather.  He 
kept  enjoying  himself  thus  until  Marcus  Flynn 
had  gone  to  his  dinner.  It  was  good  to  rub  it 
into  Mickeen,  a  cur  that  had  it  in  him  mebbe  to 
attack  the  peelers,  while  the  opportunity  offered. 
Upon  the  disappearance  of  Marcus  his  tone  sud- 
denly changed  into  the  accents  of  request  and 
supplication. 

"  Damn  it,  give  us  a  bit  of  tobacco,  Mickeen.  I 
can't  afford  to  buy  it  now  with  the  price  of  every- 
thing and  the  wife  sick  and  all  the  kids  I  have." 

Michael  did  not  refuse.  Even  though  the  Ser- 
geant might  be  an  employe  of  England  he  stood 
for  an  immediate,  definite  reality  in  regard  to 
Ballycullen.  He  had  heard  of  many  a  fellow 
that  had  lost  his  job  through  the  connivery  of  a 
peeler.  Yet  there  had  leaped  many  moments  into 
this  day  when  his  mind  rose  grandly  out  of  the 
passive  state  to  which  it  was  chained  almost  con- 


MEN  AND  THINGS  25 

tinuously  by  means  of  tortures.  He  would  go  to 
the  door  then  and  look  out  at  the  other  shop  in 
which  Mirandolina  Conway  daily  endured  the 
same  slavery. 


CHAPTER  III 

FURTHER  REALITIES 

THERE  was  some  touch  of  ecstasy  in  this 
day  for  Mirandolina  Conway  too.  Even 
the  name  which  had  been  given  her  in  the 
satirical  spirit  of  Ballycullen  seemed  more  in 
harmony  with  romance.  .  .  .  There  was  a 
great  gladness  upon  her  when  she  heard  it  spoken. 
In  moments  during  the  long  day  behind  the 
counter  her  eyes  were  dazzled  by  happy  glinting 
lights  which  had  begun  for  the  first  time  to  flash 
queerly  almost  out  of  the  gloom  of  Ballycullen. 
There  did  not  appear  to  be  the  least  vanity  in  the 
thought  that  Sara  Curran  could  not  have  loved 
Robert  Emmet  more  fondly  than  she  now  loved 
Michael  Dempsey. 

She  is  far  from  the  land  where  her  young  hero  sleeps, 

And  lovers  around  her  are  sighing, 
But  coldly  she  turns  from  their  gaze  and  weeps, 

For  her  heart  in  his  grave  is  lying. 

That  was  from  the  song  that  had  been  made 
by  Tommy  Moore.     Even  as  she  remembered  the 

26 


FURTHER  REALITIES  27 

familiar  lines  they  seemed  to  hold  less  sincerity 
than  she  would  wish  them  to  contain,  for  had 
not  the  proud  and  lovely  Miss  Curran,  a  little 
later,  married  an  English  Officer!  Imagine,  an 
English  Officer,  one  of  the  very  lot  that  butchered 
Robert  Emmet,  and  had  not  the  poet  Moore  who 
had  written  those  lines  taken  up  a  Government 
job !  Michael  had  told  her  these  and  many  other 
intimate  little  scraps  of  Irish  history  in  the  in- 
tervals between  the  acts  last  night.  She  had  not 
known  of  such  things,  for  what  was  she  after  all 
only  a  silly  girl  in  a  shop  reading  only  the  silly 
books  that  one  could  get  in  a  place  like  Bally- 
cullen  ?  But  now,  through  power  of  all  that  was 
hidden  in  the  heart  and  in  the  mind  of  Michael 
Dempsey,  was  her  thought  and  hope  being  rapidly 
linked  with  beautiful  and  noble  things.  He  was 
so  very  different  in  his  way  from  anyone  she 
knew  in  Ballycullen.  Her  mind  was  confused 
with  thought  of  him  and  of  Robert  Emmet.  .  .  . 
Yet  even  in  his  day  meanness  and  unfaithfulness 
had  crowded  around  the  heroic  figure  of  Robert 
Emmet,  and  slackness  and  treachery  had  finally 
brought  that  proud  life  to  a  poor,  mean  ending. 

The  leaping  gladness  of  her  mind  was  almost 
transmuting  her  thought  into  the  very  stuff  of 
dreams.  Michael  Dempsey  had  something  fine 
in  him  surely,  something  which  might  yet  change 
the  heart  of  Ballycullen  and  release  the  poor  soul 


28       JHE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

of  it  from  its  chains.  But  the  realities  of  Bally- 
cullen  were  moving  in  across  her  mind,  a  drab 
crowd  of  facts  and  people.  Here,  for  instance, 
was  Anna  Maria  McGuinness  running  in  every 
few  minutes  for  white  spools,  a  lame  excuse 
enough,  even  though  she  was  a  dressmaker,  see- 
ing that  she  merely  wanted  to  talk  about  the  play, 
for  upon  each  occasion  it  was  the  first  word  that 
came  to  her  tongue. 

"I  suppose  Michael  Dempsey  must  nearly  im- 
agine that  he's  Robert  Emmet  himself  now,"  she 
said  for  about  the  fortieth  time  as  she  looked 
quizzically  into  the  eyes  of  Mirandolina. 
"  Musha,  it  was  grand  to  see  the  two  of  yous  kiss- 
ing last  night  upon  the  stage  and  it  suited,  don't 
you  know,  grand,  grand.  I  don't  think  I  ever 
saw  anything  to  suit  so  well  so  I  didn't.  It  won't 
come  strange  to  yous  to  be  doing  it  in  private  at 
all  and  yous  after  performing  like  that  in  public ! 

"  Will  you  ever  forget  when  Michael  made  the 
curious  blunder  in  the  words  and  nearly  knocked 
you  out  of  your  speech  and  out  of  your  standing 
as  well  with  the  fright  that  he  might  be  after 
losing  his  memory  or  something  ?  It  was  strange 
of  him,  don't  you  know,  and  he  such  a  great 
reader  out  and  out.  But  sure  I  often  heard  my 
father,  the  Lord  have  mercy  on  him,  say  that 
there  was  nothing  so  bad  as  for  a  person  of  little 
or  no  education  to  read  too  much. 


FURTHER  REALITIES  29 

"Mebbe  Ballycullen'll  get  too  hot  to  hold  yous 
now,  that  there'll  be  a  touch  of  the  showman  in 
the  travelling  company  about  him  and  a  trace  of 
the  actress  about  yourself,  you  looking  like  the 
picture  of  a  stage  lady  that  you'd  see  in  the 
'Daily  Sketch'? 

"  Oh,  it  was  a  great  success,  a  great  success 
entirely.  It  would  nearly  make  anyone  think 
that  yous  ought  to  be  on  for  running  away  to- 
gether and  going  on  the  stage  for  a  living.  Sure 
they  say  that  once  you  start  playacting  like  this 
you'll  never  be  any  good  for  anything  else." 

Anna  Maria  McGuinness  had  managed  to 
crush  all  this  show  of  interest  into  her  visits  for 
the  purchase  of  spools  which  she  did  not  want, 
but  she  was  compelled  by  many  impulses  to  say 
her  say  about  the  play.  She  was  an  old  maid 
past  all  hope  of  a  man  and  the  one  immense  sat- 
isfaction of  her  life  lay  in  her  endeavours  to 
desolate  the  bright  thoughts  which  might  be 
dancing  in  the  mind  of  any  young  girl,  and  it 
had  already  burned  her  very  heart  to  think  that 
the  long  love  scene  between  Michael  Dempsey 
as  Robert  Emmet  and  Mirandolina  Conway  as 
Sara  Curran  had  not  been  all  playacting.  .  .  . 
It  had  poisoned  all  her  thought  towards  her  pur- 
pose now. 

Gradually,  through  power  of  these  remarks 
falling  endlessly  upon  her  ears,  the  thoughts  of 


30       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

Mirandolina  became  less  bright  than  they  had 
been  in  the  morning.  She  went  often  to  the  win- 
dow and,  through  the  brave  show  of  fashionable 
drapery,  looked  out  upon  the  mean  street  of  Bal- 
lycullen.  She  saw  some  of  the  fellows  who  had 
so  recently  appeared  with  her  upon  the  stage 
move  about  their  business  in  their  dirty  working 
clothes.  She  viewed,  pantomimically,  the  accom- 
panying grins  of  the  loud  sneers  which  greeted 
them  as  they  met  others  who  had  seen  the  play. 
Michael  Dwyer!  Thomas  Russell!  Lord  Nor- 
bury!  Leonard  McNally!  The  names  of  the 
figures  of  Emmet's  dream  and  doom  were  ban- 
died about  in  crude  mockery,  for  this  was  a  par- 
ticular form  of  torture  which  would  survive  for 
a  long  time  after  the  play.  The  satirical  identi- 
fication of  the  players  with  the  parts  in  which 
they  had  appeared.  It  was  merely  another  way 
that  Ballycullen  had  of  enforcing  its  reality.  It 
was  part  of  the  effective  throwing  of  the  dish- 
cloth of  to-day  upon  the  stained  glass  glories  of 
a  bygone  time.  .  .  .  There  now  were 
"Michael  Dwyer"  and  "Thomas  Russell"  work- 
ing in  the  forge  while  "  Lord  Norbury,"  a  rather 
insignificant  looking  young  man,  was  just  riding 
a  screechy  bicycle  in  from  the  school  where  he 
taught,  a  common  slave  of  the  National  Board  of 
Education  and  of  the  parents  of  the  children. 
And  there  also  was  "  Major  Sirr,"  the  minister's 


FURTHER  REALITIES  31 

boy,  driving  the  Rev.  Henry  Connor,  rector  of 
Ballycullen,  up  the  street  in  his  open  carriage 
and  looking  very  straight  and  stiff  upon  the  peri- 
lous seat  in  a  white  melton  coat  with  big  pearl 
buttons  and  a  high  silk  hat  with  a  heavy  cock- 
ade at  the  side.  Then  there  passed  before  her 
eyes  Ambrose  Donohue  who  had  taken  the  part 
of  "Leonard  McNally."  He  was  carrying  a 
paint-pot  in  one  hand  and  a  saw  in  the  other. 

A  little  girl  who  was  barely  able  to  reach  up  to 
the  counter  came  into  the  shop. 

"I  want  a  pennorth  of  pure  silk  ribbon,  Miss." 
Then  she  put  on  a  wise  smile  which  Mirandolina 
thought  appeared  a  little  too  old-fashioned  upon 
the  face  of  so  young  a  child. 

"Sara  Curran,  I  saw  you  last  night  on  the 
stage,  so  I  did,  and  you  were  lovely." 

Later  there  came  grave,  matronly  women  who 
said,  between  many  winks  and  eloquent  shakes  of 
the  head,  that  the  play  was  simply  beautiful  but 
that  the  Ballycullen  Dramatic  Class  were  not  a 
very  select  crowd  and  that  of  course  a  girl  de- 
pending altogether  for  her  living  by  the  public 
upon  her  good  name  could  not  be  too  careful. 
Of  course  some  of  the  class  were  all  right  but  the 
rest  of  them  were  not  all  as  one. 

All  day  her  heart  seemed  to  be  gasping  for- 
ward towards  the  quiet,  soothing  hour  when  the 
shops  would  be  closed  and  in  which  Michael  and 


32        THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

she  had  arranged  to  meet.  It  would  be  some- 
thing to  know  the  comfort  of  his  presence  again 
if  even  only  for  a  short  space.  He  must  surely 
be  filling  the  drab  place  through  which  they  were 
moving  with  the  light  of  dreams  and  the  wonder 
of  immortal  longing.  This  would  not  be  the  first 
time  that  they  had  met  and  moved  around  Bally- 
cullen  after  both  had  come  out  of  their  shops 
and  there  was  nothing  at  all  strange  in  the  fact 
that  they  should  have  slipped  into  this  affection 
for  one  another.  It  was  here  as  natural  that 
shop-boys  and  shop-girls  should  mate  with  one 
another  as  birds  of  the  same  species  in  the  trees. 
If  either  of  them  were  of  a  loftier  station  than 
the  other  it  might  have  been  cause  of  the  same 
anxiety  always,  but  now,  through  power  of  their 
recent  notable  achievement,  they  had  both  won 
already  to  a  certain  prominence  which  might  eas- 
ily make  Ballycullen  concerned  for  their  future. 
And  the  play  too  had  intensified  them  in  the  eyes 
of  one  another  for,  hitherto,  it  could  not  have 
been  said  that  they  had  made  the  same  fine  regard 
to  hang  as  a  mist  of  tenderness  between  them. 
Thus  a  new  aspect  of  their  relationship  seemed 
suddenly  to  have  been  established  which  might 
finally  perfect  whatever  splendour  of  romance 
this  connection  of  their  lives  was  destined  to 
bring. 

They  met,   about  half-past  eight,   where  the 


FURTHER  REALITIES  33 

high  demesne  wall  sweeps  in  a  graceful  curve 
along  the  road  to  Castleconnor  and  the  ivy  hangs 
out  a  rich  green  continuous  festoon  above  the 
footpath.  There  was  something  about  his  near 
approach  to-night  that  strangely  thrilled  her  with 
a  feeling  that  had  not  been  customary  in  such  a 
moment.  He  too  felt  himself  moving  with  a 
gladder  swing  and  the  red  coal  of  his  cigarette 
seemed  to  glow  more  intensely  as  he  caught  up 
with  her  on  the  footpath.  All  day  it  had  felt  as 
if  Ballycullen  had  been  beating  them  down  from 
their  high  places,  but  now,  in  its  efforts  to  abridge 
their  emancipation,  was  it  defeated  again. 

Their  talk  soon  began  to  draw  out  of  all  per- 
sonal aspects  of  the  night  before  and  to  become 
again  a  part  of  the  dream  of  Ireland.  .  .  .  She 
was  hungry  for  more  romantic  history,  which 
would  link  him  down  all  the  star-lit  ways  of  her 
vision  with  those  who  had  given  their  all  for 
love  of  Ireland. 

"  Tell  me  more,"  she  said.  His  talk  seemed  to 
tumble  willy-nilly  out  of  his  disordered  reading, 
bits  of  history,  bits  of  biography,  bits  of  poetry, 
bits  of  dramatic  knowledge  derived  from  notices 
of  the  National  Theatre  Society's  plays  in  "Sinn 
Fein."  Yet  his  words  seemed  to  cause  the  flash- 
ing of  much  beauty  before  her  eyes  as  he  went  on 
with  unaccustomed  eloquence.  .  .  .  They 
seemed  to  be  walking  a  way  of  wonder  although 


34       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

it  was  only  the  wet  sidewalk  which  led  from  Bal- 
lycullen  to  Castleconnor.  .  .  .  Now  and  then 
they  would  stop  and  look,  with  a  wild  tenderness, 
into  the  eyes  of  one  another.  They  seemed  to  do 
this  at  the  bidding  of  a  common  impulse,  for  it  is 
only  the  eyes  which  mirror  the  secret  processes  of 
the  heart.  How  much  of  all  this  distant  dream 
of  Ireland  involving  them  might  yet  come  true? 
They  scarcely  dared  to  fancy.  .  .  .  They  had 
yet  to  cut  a  way  for  themselves  up  from  the  life 
of  Ballycullen  to  which  both  were  chained  by 
strong  links  of  the  same  strength.  Some  day  it 
might  be,  but  some  day,  as  the  old  people  said, 
was  a  long  day.  .  .  .  And  already  Ballycullen 
was  edging  itself  in  to  oust  their  momentary  hap- 
piness. 

Here  was  Michael  already  telling  her  that  he 
simply  had  to  attend  a  meeting  of  the  Dramatic 
Class  to-night.  The  reason  seemed  so  slight  and 
mean  beside  the  magic  that  their  company  had 
made.  There  was  some  money  for  tickets  he  had 
sold  which  he  had  to  give  an  account  of.  If  he 
did  not  turn  up  to-night  they  would  probably  say 
that  he  was  trying  to  stick  to  the  money.  They 
were  probably  saying  that  already.  There  was 
some  talk  of  a  new  hall.  He  would  probably  be 
honoured  by  being  put  on  the  committee.  He 
would  feel  compelled  by  his  principles  to  watch 
and  see  that  the  committee  was  given  an  Irish- 


FURTHER  REALITIES  35 

Ireland  constitution  as  well  as  all  that  might  take 
place  in  the  hall  a  complexion  coloured  by  the 
same  principles.  Maybe,  through  all  this  influ- 
ence the  thought  of  which  came  to  him  as  a  sud- 
den sense  of  power,  he  might  yet  be  able  to  lead 
Ballycullen  up  into  the  noble  company  of  the  new 
Ireland.  Yet,  continually  in  the  things  she  said 
was  she  still  retreating  within  the  precincts  of  the 
dream.  She  clutched  and  fondled  him.  .  .  . 
There  was  upon  him  also  in  sudden  moments  an 
anxiety  to  be  keeping  her  with  him  this  night  as 
if  the  great  purpose  which  absorbed  him  held 
some  foreshadowing  of  separation  from  her. 

At  last,  after  much  half  gladsome,  half  pain- 
ful dalliance,  a  few  kisses  and  a  few  laughs,  he 
went  up  the  little  stairway  into  the  Bank  room 
which,  on  occasions  like  the  present,  was  also  the 
Committee  room  of  the  Ballycullen  Young  Men's 
Hall.  She  continued  down  the  street  a  little  way 
and,  passing  through  a  dark,  damp  hallway,  went 
upstairs  to  her  narrow  room  over  the  shop  where 
she  worked  every  day. 


CHAPTER  IV 

MEN  OF  YESTERDAY  AND  TO-DAY 

THE  little  history  of  the  place  into  which 
Michael  had  shown  some  anxiety  to  go  set 
it  resolutely  in  symbolic  relation  to  the 
history  of  his  country,  especially  that  intense, 
agrarian  history  which  is  perpetuated  down 
through  power  of  local  feuds,  now  taking  the 
place  of  the  battles  and  rages  of  Captains  and 
Kings.  It  lay  within  the  shadow  of  King  John's 
castle,  as  they  called  the  great  broken  pile  at  the 
head  of  the  town,  and,  forced  as  it  were  by  the 
conquering  personality  of  those  grim  walls,  dis- 
played a  certain  connection  with  tyranny,  for  it 
had  once  been  a  courthouse. 

The  rich  fields,  which  some  Norman  grabber 
had  taken  from  the  Irish,  had  determined  the 
pride,  importance  and  position  of  the  castle. 
Later  it  was  the  same  wealth  which  had  caused 
Cromwell  to  come  this  way  and  blow  it  to  hell. 
.  .  .  Sometime  in  the  Eighteenth  century  this 
quaint  courthouse  had  sprung  up  here.  There 
was  a  queer  touch  of  humour  in  the  thought  that 

36 


MEN  OF  YESTERDAY  AND  TO-DAY  37 

it  had  been  built  of  the  stones  which  had  been 
blown  out  of  King  John's  castle  by  the  guns  of 
Cromwell.  .  .  .  From  it  had  issued  forth, 
under  the  false  pretence  of  law  and  justice,  the 
sheer  cruelty  which  the  rich  fields  had  raised  up 
in  the  hearts  of  men.  Men  had  gone  from  it  to 
be  hanged  in  '98  on  Gallows  Hill  at  the  other  end 
of  Ballycullen.  Later,  in  '48  and  '67  the  mur- 
derous process  was  here  begun  which  had  ended 
in  their  transportation.  And  so  on  down  to  the 
days  of  the  Land  League  when  men  had  been 
here  found  guilty  of  divers  offences  and  worthy 
of  Kilmainham.  Even  this  mean  aspect  of 
majesty  had  dwindled  in  the  hopeless,  dead 
empty  years  which  followed  the  death  of  Parnell. 
The  security  of  tenure  which  had  been  won  for 
them  had  driven  all  the  ancient,  redeeming  fire 
out  of  their  souls.  Men  never  did  anything 
worth  sending  them  to  jail  for  now  except  drink 
and  beat  their  wives  and  break  into  pubs  back- 
wards on  a  Sunday.  Passed  even  was  the  pag- 
eant of  a  dark  crowd  of  armed  peelers  with  spiked 
helmets  and  fixed  bayonets  standing  all  round 
the  still  defeated  people,  with  a  gouty  removable 
magistrate  on  the  bench  giving  vent  to  his  venom 
in  long  tirades  about  the  villainy  of  the  people  of 
Ireland.  .  .  . 

The  magistrates  who  assembled  in  Ballycullen 
now  were  for  the  most  part  sons  of  men  who  had 


38       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

done  jail  for  agrarian  crimes.  They  were  most 
popular  men.  So  too  were  the  peelers,  all,  all 
popular  men.  Those  who  committed  the  more 
gentlemanly  forms  of  petty  felony  being  popular 
men  also,  the  Petty  Sessions  Court  was  generally 
a  very  amusing  little  social  gathering,  the  only 
people  severely  dealt  with  being  those  of  the 
tramp  class  or  occasional  rebellious  spirits  who 
sometimes  questioned  the  authority  of  the  smug, 
contented  men  in  their  acquisitive  ways  which  lay 
remote  from  the  magisterial  dispensation  of  jus- 
tice. In  fact  on  the  whole,  considering  the 
scenes  presently  enacted  within  it,  the  old  court- 
house had  possessed  an  historical  tradition  too 
severe  and  so  the  machinery  of  the  law  had  been 
removed  to  a  modern,  pretentious  building  a  little 
further  down  the  street.  So  its  consequent  empti- 
ness had  determined  its  conversion  to  a  Young 
Men's  Hall.  It  was  sufficiently  suitable  for  this 
purpose,  because  a  young  men's  hall,  no  matter 
how  euphemistic  the  title  might  sound,  was  noth- 
ing more  than  a  roof  under  which  men  of  all  ages 
assembled  to  smoke  and  spit  and  gossip  and  play 
cards  around  a  fire.  It  was  very  like  a  public- 
house  only  it  had  no  license.  To  be  thus  in  pos- 
session of  the  courthouse  was  a  triumph  for 
the  forces  of  the  people  certainly,  yet,  curiously 
enough,  in  the  Young  Men's  Hall  of  all  the 
places  in  Ballycullen  there  was  no  hint  of  the 


MEN  OF  YESTERDAY  AND  TO-DAY  39 

spiritual  uplift  which  Ballycullen  so  badly 
needed.  Before  the  coming  of  the  Hall,  or  "the 
Club"  as  it  was  more  commonly  called,  Culligan's 
corner  outside  had  been  the  place  of  assembly.  A 
correct  impression  of  the  Hall  was  simply  that 
the  corner  had  been  turned  inside. 

The  principal  part  of  the  courthouse  into  which 
the  people  of  Ballycullen  had  so  recently  packed 
themselves  to  witness  Robert  Emmet  had  once  in- 
cluded the  whole  court,  the  auditorium  where 
poor,  broken  spirits  came  to  be  awed,  the  dock 
so  securely  fenced  with  strong  spikes,  the  arena 
where  legal  gladiators  had  made  ferocious  at- 
tacks upon  one  another,  the  high  place,  with  the 
gilt  and  purple  canopy  above  it,  where  his  wor- 
ship or  his  honour  or  his  lordship  tugged  at  a 
mangy  moustache  as  he  thought  out  his  judg- 
ments in  the  interests  of  those  who  had  hired  him. 
.  .  .  Yet  the  result  of  this  almost  poetic  re- 
placement was  not  everything  to  the  mind  of 
Michael  Dempsey.  One  could  not  successfully 
link  a  single  thought  of  this  place  with  a  thought 
of  the  nation.  The  drift  of  the  years  which  had 
followed  the  death  of  Parnell  was  the  very  nega- 
tion of  all  nationality  and  these  were  the  years 
that  had  left  the  most  intimate  mark  upon  the  old 
courthouse. 

This  young  men's  hall  had  been  inaugurated 
"  with  a  great  flourish  of  trumpets,"  to  use  a 


40       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

phrase  from  the  local  paper,  and  of  course,  as  a 
tribute  to  their  natural  elevation  at  the  head  and 
front  of  everything,  the  publicans  had  been 
chosen  to  lend  a  hand  and  they  had  left,  in  their 
own  words,  "  no  stone  unturned  "  to  make  it  a  suc- 
cess until  they  began  to  see  in  its  very  success  a 
promise  of  their  own  decline.  It  was  bad  policy 
after  all  to  support  a  thing  which  had  for  one  of 
its  objects  the  keeping  of  the  young  fellows  out  of 
the  public-houses.  They  ceased  suddenly  to 
have  any  great  interest  in  the  hall  or  its  objects 
just  as  soon  as  they  became  fully  convinced  of 
this.  Whenever  any  of  them  came  in  now  at  all 
it  was  only  in  the  hope  of  getting  back  a  bit  of 
what  he  might  have  lost  at  nap  in  the  little  card- 
room  at  the  back  which  was  just  like  one  of  their 
own  tap-rooms  only  there  was  no  beer.  In  the 
reading  room  were  still  a  few  books  of  a  miscel- 
laneous kind  which  had  been  presented  to  "The 
Library"  in  the  days  when  the  Young  Men's  Hall 
threatened  to  become  the  University  of  Ballycul- 
len.  The  younger  and  minor  members  of  the 
club  spent  their  time  mostly  hunched  up  like  old 
men  around  a  big  stove  in  one  corner  looking  into 
the  quiet  glow  with  silent,  aged  looks.  .  .  . 
The  thick  silence  was  often  broken  by  the  sizzle 
of  a  spit  as  one  was  landed  successfully  upon  the 
red  hot  lid  of  the  stove.  .  .  .  The  Dramatic 
Class  organised  by  Michael  Dempsey  had  come 


MEN  OF  YESTERDAY  AND  TO-DAY  41 

as  it  were  to  put  new  life  into  something  practi- 
cally dead  and  it  had  suddenly  seemed  to  some 
of  the  minor  members  that  the  Club  might  be 
made  to  mean  something  after  all.  And  thus  had 
a  sharp  division  arisen  between  what  might  come 
to  be  the  progressive  and  what  certainly  was  now 
the  conservative  element  in  Ballycullen.  The 
elderly,  unchangeable  men  still  wanted  their  room 
for  smoking  and  spitting  and  playing  cards  in. 
The  arrangement  of  dressing-rooms,  etc.,  for  a 
play  occasioned  them  an  amount  of  disturbance 
which  they  bore  with  ill  grace.  Besides,  in  those 
days  before  the  war  and  its  demoralising  influx 
of  money,  making  most  for  the  independence  of 
the  publican,  those  publicans  who  could  always 
influence  the  older  men  anxiously  desired  every 
penny  to  be  spent  in  their  houses,  and  a  concert  or 
a  play  was  a  thing  that  made  away  with  a  lot  of 
money  that  to  their  way  of  thinking  by  right  was 
theirs.  Besides  also  what  purpose  could  the 
fund  they  were  making  up  by  such  means  have 
other  than  the  upliftment  of  Ballycullen  which 
was  something  they  did  not  want  at  all  seeing 
that  they  throve  upon  its  degradation.  Bally- 
cullen had  been  growing  more  and  more  lifeless 
until  this  little  stir  of  a  clash  had  come.  The 
young  men,  or  those  who  were  still  merely  eager, 
unfledged  boys,  had  gathered,  as  they  thought, 
around  Michael  Dempsey,  while  the  elderly  men 


42        THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

had  begun  to  cling  together  angrily  like  wasps 
as  elderly  men  always  will  when  their  authority 
is  threatened.  Hitherto  the  few  ideas  which  had 
come  to  Michael  from  his  scattered  reading  had 
only  caused  a  poor,  dumb  stirring  in  his  mind, 
but  now  the  fancied  emancipation  of  a  sudden 
madness  was  upon  him.  It  was  the  things  that 
were  done  in  Ballycullen  which  in  a  way  had 
caused  all  the  sadness  of  Ireland.  And  now  that 
Mirandolina  had  come  dancing  brightly  into  his 
life  the  feeling  that  he  must  question  the  guilt  of 
the  place  greatly  was  upon  him  as  he  entered 
the  hall. 

The  ugly,  discoloured  walls,  the  remains  of 
the  law-court  fixtures,  expressed  silently  a  con- 
nection between  this  place  and  bygone  times,  but 
the  people  who  now  stood  waiting  for  Michael 
in  one  of  the  little  rooms  were  most  dismally  of 
the  present  and  its  drifting  emptiness.  They 
were  grinning  broadly  at  one  another  about  the 
many  laughable  side-issues  of  the  play,  of  how 
one  man  had  given  a  bad  two-shilling  piece  at 
the  door  only  to  be  ignominiously  "collared"  by 
one  of  the  stewards  just  as  he  was  marching  into 
one  of  the  grand  front  seats  with  his  girl.  .  .  . 
Of  how  Seumas  Cunneen  in  the  part  of  Michael 
Dwyer  had  tried  to  make  it  a  funny  stage-Irish 
part,  like  the  way  it  would  be  done  by  a  fellow 
in  a  travelling  company,  although  there  was  little 


MEN  OF  YESTERDAY  AND  TO-DAY  43 

humour  in  the  lines  of  the  stern  man  who  had 
been  hunted  like  a  wild  dog  all  across  the  Wick- 
low  Hills.  .  .  .  But  the  bottle  of  whiskey 
found  necessary  to  defeat  the  nervousness  which 
appearance  before  Ballycullen  brought  upon 
him,  left  by  accident  to  peep  out  of  the  pocket 
nearest  the  audience,  had  helped  to  give  the  part 
a  different  reading  than  that  which  Michael 
Dempsey,  always  so  serious,  had  intended,  and 
one  very  much  more  acceptable  to  the  taste  of 
Ballycullen.  And  thus,  out  of  their  mean  out- 
looks on  all  things  the  talk  became  smaller  and 
smaller.  Then  someone  suddenly  remembered 
Robert  Emmet.  This  was  Gilbert  McCormack 
whose  father  had  been  Hugh  O'Donnell  McCor- 
mack, the  most  notable  Parnellite  in  this  part  of 
Ireland.  With  his  pinched  face  and  womanish 
hands  this  man  was  certainly,  as  almost  always 
happens,  of  a  meaner  breed  than  his  father  who 
had  been  something  like  a  man,  enduring  for  his 
attachment  to  a  lost  cause  even  unto  destruction. 
Perhaps,  because  his  own  father  had  been  broken 
in  the  same  hopeless  fight,  Hugh  O'Donnell  Mc- 
Cormack was  a  man  whom  Michael  was  able  to 
remember  with  the  most  extraordinary  clearness, 
perhaps  through  his  own  childhood  remembrance 
of  having  seen  him  in  the  flesh  and  in  the  crea- 
tion of  his  mother's  talk.  He  could  see  him 
always,  when  he  looked  upon  his  son  Gilbert, 


44       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

driving  out  of  Ballycullen  on  a  summer  evening 
in  his  shabby  trap  to  the  big  damp  house  upon 
his  dwindling  farm.  .  .  .  There  in  the  mould- 
ering parlour  decorated  only  with  pictures  of 
William  Ewart  Gladstone  and  Charles  Stewart 
Parnell,  Hugh  O'Donnell  McCormack  would 
look  sadly  into  the  eyes  of  his  young  wife  as  she 
said: 

"Well,  I  suppose  you  had  a  meeting  to-day?" 

"Aye,  indeed,  Martha.  We  had  a  meeting  to- 
day." 

"Is  there  any  sign  of  the  persecution  slacken- 
ing, Hugh?" 

"Oh,  we  had  a  great  meeting  entirely  to-day. 
John  Carrick,  Martin  Burke,  Loughlin  McNa- 
mara,  Andrew  Dempsey  and  myself.  Only  the 
few  faithful  followers  of  the  Chief  in  Ballycul- 
len, Martha.  We  had  a  great  chat  over  a  lot  of 
things  and  it  was  most  terrific  to  see  the  enthu- 


siasm." 


Then  the  sad  look,  falling  like  a  mist  upon  her 
bright  eyes,  would  show  that  she  knew  how  this 
man  she  had  married  in  the  prime  of  his  patriot- 
ism had  spent  his  day  with  the  others  in  some 
dark  room  at  the  back  of  one  of  the  public-houses 
in  Ballycullen  talking  about  poor  Parnell  and 
telling  them  that  his  heart  was  in  the  grave  in 
Glasnevin  with  his  dear,  martyred  King,  and 
striking  the  table  and  whispering  fiercely  the  most 


MEN  OF  YESTERDAY  AND  TO-DAY  45 

dreadful  things  about  the  Bishops  and  Priests  of 
Ireland.  .  .  .  They  would  have  achieved 
nothing  by  all  this,  for  they  were  merely  futile 
men  drifting  with  their  country  down  a  dark 
tide.  .  .  . 

Then  this  pretty  girl-wife  had  died,  the  broken 
Parnellite  never  realising  the  hand  he  had  in  her 
death  until  she  was  gone.  But  ever  after  attend- 
ance at  some  such  meeting  in  Ballycullen  he 
would  stumble  drunkenly  across  the  fields  to  cry 
over  her  grave.  ...  A  curious  madman  surely 
this  Hugh  O'Donnell  McCormack  who  might 
have  won  some  respect  and  admiration  for  his 
devotion  to  a  lost  cause  in  a  more  decent  country 
than  the  Ireland  of  his  time. 

He  had  not  left  much  of  a  son  after  him  surely 
in  the  person  of  Gilbert  McCormack.  "One  of 
the  biggest  bowsies  of  a  cur  on  the  Ballycullen 
District  Council"  was  the  standard  estimate  of 
his  character,  yet  he  never  failed  to  snatch  at 
every  little  opportunity  to  give  himself  distinction 
as  his  father's  son.  He  was  always  very  jealous 
of  any  other  one  who  showed  the  least  promise  of 
jumping  into  prominence. 

Standing  beside  him  now,  huge  and  powerfully 
ignorant,  was  Thomas  Cooney,  the  publican.  He 
was  here  to-night  for  the  first  time  in  a  great 
while,  for  he  felt  that  his  rights  had  been  dis- 
tinctly encroached  upon.  He  was  a  man  whose 


life  was  sped  by  the  rages  of  a  mean  mind  and 
it  was  his  aim  always  to  keep  people  down. 
^There  were  three  ways  in  which  he  worked 
towards  this  end.  His  money  stood  in  particular 
for  one  aspect  of  his  power.  There  were  so  many 
people  belonging  to  Ballycullen  and  the  parish 
in  his  books  that  they  could  not  possibly  afford 
to  go  against  him.  It  was  an  almost  religious 
principle  of  business  with  him  to  give  them  a  run 
of  certain  distance  in  his  books  so  that  they  could 
not  afford  to  be  against  him  in  any  turn  of  poli- 
tics or  of  business.  He  had  never  liked  this  hall 
either,  although  he  had  given  it  a  certain  amount 
of  support  at  the  outset.  It  struck  at  the  very 
foundation  of  his  power.  So  long  as  he  had  the 
young  men  coming  in  to  tipple  in  his  pub  he 
knew  that  he  had  them  at  his  mercy.  In  their 
strong  drunkenness  they  were  blind  to  the  offence 
he  stood  for  against  the  national  life  and  their 
own  very  existence,  but  sobriety  was  a  thing  that 
might  cause  them  to  see.  He  clung  like  a  big 
excrescence  to  all  that  was  elderly  and  decaying  in 
the  life  of  his  country  and  to  him  always  the  very 
notion  of  innovation  of  any  kind  went  very  hard 
upon  his  conscience.  Because  of  many  an  ex- 
tension of  his  influence  the  hall  had  declined 
almost  to  vanishing  point,  but  now  this  fellow 
Michael  Dempsey,  his  rival  Marcus  Flynn's 
shop-boy,  had  the  cheek  to  stand  for  a  great 


MEN  OF  YESTERDAY  AND  TO-DAY  47. 

revival  of  the  hall  and  it  was  because  of  this  that 
he  looked  upon  Michael  as  a  personal  enemy  with 
a  gaze  of  ferocity  that  was  perfectly  apparent  in 
the  little  room. 

The  third  man,  now  looming  largely  in  the 
group,  was  Ambrose  Donohue,  a  young  man  of 
ambitions  too  but  of  a  kind  which  were  in  strong 
contrast  with  those  of  Michael  Dempsey.  He 
possessed  a  certain  distinction  in  the  place  of 
some  years  standing  such  as  had  now  suddenly 
fallen  upon  Michael.  But  it  was  to  England 
that  Ambrose  Donohue  had  looked  for  his  in- 
spiration. He  had  consistently  read  every  one  of 
those  English  weeklies  which  were  described  as 
demoralising,  degrading,  immoral,  filthy,  and 
west  British  by  the  Irish  weeklies  which  Michael 
read.  But  the  shoneenism  of  Ambrose  was  in 
more  perfect  keeping  with  the  shoneen  heart  of 
Ballycullen.  The  flashy,  cheap  clothes  which  he 
bought  "made  to  measure"  in  England,  his  lout- 
ish air  and  superficial  manner  were  as  one  with 
the  cheapness,  the  shoddiness,  the  frothiness  of 
life  which  in  this  place  had  departed  so  far  from 
the  grandeurs  of  the  ancient  Gaelic  civilisation. 
The  songs  which  he  sang  were  out  of  the  English 
music  halls,  the  books  which  he  read  were 
English  drivel,  the  few  plays  he  had  ever  seen 
were  English  rubbish  also.  The  part  he  had 
chosen  in  "  Robert  Emmet,"  that  of  Leonard  Me- 


48       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

Nally,  the  informer^  the  villain  of  the  piece,  he 
had  given  the  full  benefit  of  his  cheap  taste. 
Thus  had  it  been  a  struggle  between  him  and 
Michael  Dempsey  for  applause,  a  struggle  be- 
tween the  worst  and  the  best  in  those  who  had 
witnessed  the  play  to  mete  out  the  applause  in 
the  proper  proportions.  Ambrose  Donohue  was 
such  a  popular  lad,  never  doing  anything  to 
offend  them,  while  he  kept  before  them  at  all 
times  the  figure  of  one  to  be  admired  as  one  of 
themselves.  While  always  loudly  making  dis- 
play of  his  distinction  he  remained  at  their 
beck  and  call,  thus  flattering  their  vanity.  Be- 
sides being  "  the  genius,"  as  he  was  proudly 
called,  he  was  also  the  principal  handy  man 
of  Ballycullen.  He  was  in  the  one  body  a 
carpenter,  a  mechanic,  a  comic  artiste  and 
a  painter  —  of  the  fronts  of  public  houses.  This 
was  the  first  occasion  upon  which  anyone  had 
leaped  beyond  him  into  the  public  eye  of  Bally- 
cullen, but  he  was  wearing  the  look  of  one  who 
did  not  seem  to  have  noticed  it. 

Michael  Dempsey  could  not  be  described  as 
having  really  entered  the  room  until,  in  three 
sudden  flashes,  he  was  thus  surrounded  by  the 
reality  of  these  three  men. 


CHAPTER  V 

A  POINT  AT  ISSUE 

THE  remainder  of  those  present  in  the  little 
room  did  not  seem  of  so  much  account. 
Not  one  of  them  was  even  so  important  as 
Gilbert  McCormack  who  wrote  D.  C.  after  his 
name  and  hobnobbed  with  the  crowd  that  came 
into  Ballycullen  every  Friday  to  manage  its 
affairs  and  pass  resolutions  declaring  confidence 
in  those  who  mismanaged  the  affairs  of  Ireland. 
It  was  by  creating  the  like  of  Gilbert  McCormack 
that  the  British  Government  had  struck  most 
subtly  at  the  self-respect  of  Ireland  and  almost 
destroyed  it.  In  their  office  and  their  persons 
these  District  Councillors  stood  fully  for  a  be- 
trayal of  Ireland. 

The  petrifying  influence  of  Thomas  Cooney 
and  the  rigid  conservation  of  thought  which  his 
presence  induced  were  strongly  upon  them.  In 
them  was  made  manifest  the  gombeen-man's 
loudest  boast  that  there  wasn't  a  man  in  Bally-» 
cullen  could  as  much  as  sneeze  at  him.  Why, 
they  were  almost  afraid  to  look  at  him.  All  oi; 

49 


50       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

them  had  always  been  pleased  to  imitate  Ambrose 
Donohue,  never  seeming  to  realise  at  all  that  he 
also  was  an  imitation  of  a  further  imitation. 
They  stood  for  less  than  nothing  with  regard  to 
the  life  in  which  they  were  fixed. 

Here  now,  in  presence  of  some  foreshadowing 
of  the  clash  which  it  was  destined  should  arise  in 
Ballycullen,  their  recent  stirring  of  admiration 
for  Michael  felt  somehow  strained  a  little  from 
their  feelings  and  subjugated.  He  was  a  decent 
"gom"  of  a  fellow  right  enough,  but  what  did  he 
always  want  to  be  blathering  about  Ireland  for? 
That  was  no  sort  of  talk  for  a  young  fellow  like 
him  at  the  present  time.  It  was  all  very  well  for 
old  fellows  in  the  days  gone  by  when  a  sup  of 
drink  would  nearly  make  them  think  that  they 
were  Robert  Emmet  or  Wolfe  Tone.  In  addi- 
tion to  those  who  had  taken  part  in  the  play  their 
number  was  re-inforced  by  the  Priest's  boy,  the 
Tailor's  son  and  the  Sergeant's  gossoon. 

Thus  almost,  as  if  by  a  skilful  effort  of  stage- 
management,  was  created  the  definite  reality 
which  had  for  its  object  the  sudden  suppression 
of  Michael  Dempsey  who  had  just  been  talking 
of  doing  so  much  for  Ireland.  There  was  a 
spasm  of  piercing  pain  in  the  thought  that  it  was 
hard  to  reach  at  once  beyond  the  limits  of  his 
narrow  life,  even  for  love  of  Mirandolina.  The 
dream  of  Sinn  Fein  had  lifted  him  of  course  be- 


A  POINT  AT  ISSUE  51 

yond  the  life  of  Ballycullen,  but  there  are  mo- 
ments in  life  when  one  feels  that  dreams  are 
dreams.  .  .  . 

A  discussion  as  to  what  might  best  be  done  with 
the  money  made  by  the  play  was  already  far  ad- 
vanced. Twenty  pounds  had  been  cleared  and 
already  it  was  making  itself  insistent  that  some- 
thing should  be  done  with  it.  In  Ballycullen, 
money,  for  whose  collection  a  number  of 
people  were  responsible,  always  seemed  to 
possess  of  itself  this  compulsion  to  uneasiness. 
Michael  was  very  anxious  that  at  least  a  portion 
should  be  devoted  towards  that  purpose  which 
was  always  most  in  his  mind.  As  yet  of  course 
Sinn  Fein  had  no  fund  on  the  lines  of  the  Irish 
Parliamentary  Fund,  swollen  so  enormously 
with  its  shiploads  of  dollars  from  America,  for 
in  this  as  in  all  else  Sinn  Fein  did  the  thing 
differently,  but  in  Michael  its  principles  were  so 
deeply  ingrained  that  quite  unconsciously  he  al- 
ways thought  along  Sinn  Fein  lines. 

This  Dramatic  Class  was,  he  felt,  a  form  of 
good  national  work  and  besides  there  was  a  side 
to  it  which  had  for  him  a  very  subtle  appeal.  It 
seemed  to  stand  for  a  kind  of  continuous  asso- 
ciation with  Mirandolina  and  a  making  of  him- 
self a  figure  of  the  miracle  she  represented  in  his 
life.  A  slight  feeling  of  vanity  had  taken  pos- 
session of  him,  for  he  felt  that  he  had  done  his 


52       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

part  well.  It  might  easily  appear  that  a  more 
finished  elocutionist  might  have  done  it  better, 
for  it  was  merely  a  dramatic  recital  of  the  things 
that  Robert  Emmet  had  said  so  long  ago.  But  to 
Michael  these  were  more  than  mere  words.  They 
seemed  the  rich  concentration  of  all  he  had  ever 
learned  of  Irish  nationality.  What  Emmet  had 
said  Wolfe  Tone  had  said  before  him  and  his 
very  words  had  been  repeated  later  by  Mitchel 
and  Davis.  Michael  had  always  longed  to  say 
them  as  an  expression  of  his  own  heart  and  that 
was  why  he  had  repeated  the  words  of  Robert 
Emmet's  part  so  well. 

Now  Thomas  Cooney  had  never  approved  of 
Robert  Emmet,  and  it  almost  caused  him  to  speak 
excrementitiously  when  he  thought  of  the  mad 
ideals  that  the  poor  unfortunate  fellow  had  at- 
tempted to  foist  upon  the  Ireland  of  his  time.  To 
his  mind,  determined  realist  as  he  was,  the  mag- 
nification of  Ireland  was  connoted  by  every  man 
in  it  doing  the  best  he  could  —  for  himself,  with- 
out being  too  particular  as  to  the  means.  What 
Call  had  any  man  to  make  an  exhibition  of  him- 
self by  talking  of  dying  for  Ireland  or  of  sacri- 
ficing himself  for  sake  of  Ireland?  It  was  all 
good  enough  now  to  be  a  member  of  "  The 
Laygue."  It  was  a  respectable  sort  of  connection 
that  brought  a  man  into  direct  touch  upon  many 
an  occasion  with  "  the  Leaders  of  the  Irish  race 


A  POINT  AT  ISSUE  53 

at  home  and  abroad."  It  was  a  way  of  bringing 
custom  to  a  man's  shop  and  of  helping  a  man  out 
of  many  a  hobble,  but  to  think  of  going  further 
—  well,  damn  it,  that  Robert  Emmet  must  be  a 
wild  omadhaun  anyway  and  he  a  kind  of  a 
gentleman,  don't  you  know,  that  could  live  a  soft, 
easy  life  and  marry  the  girl  if  he  had  a  mind  for 
it  instead  of  mixing  himself  up  with  the  riff-raff 
of  Dublin  that  only  made  a  show  of  him  when 
he  started  the  little  rebellion.  To  his  mind  all 
that  foolishness  which  nearly  sickened  him  was 
now  expressed,  for  his  particular  offense,  too,  in 
the  person  of  Michael  Dempsey.  Of  course  he 
had  always  felt  obliged  to  distrust  him  as  the 
fellow  in  Marcus  Flynn's  shop,  for  Marcus  and 
he  had  been  rivals  of  long  standing.  Conse- 
quently the  proposition  he  now  ventured  came 
from  him  easily  as  if  ready  made  for  a  great 
while. 

"  Now  idle  money  like  this  should  always  be 
given  to  '  the  Cause '  and  I  may  go  further  and 
say  that  it  must  be  given  to  '  the  Cause.'  If  we 
don't  support  them  that's  fighting  our  battles  on 
the  floor  of  the  house  what'll  they  think  of  us, 
what'll  England  think  of  us,  what'll  the  world 
think  of  us?  " 

There  was  immediate  and  prolonged  applause 
in  the  little  room,  for  it  was  in  the  nature  of  a 
fixed  tradition  or  a  politico-religious  rite  that 


54       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

Thomas  Cooney  should  always  be  whole-heart- 
edly supported  whenever  he  made  a  public  pro- 
nouncement of  this  kind.  Besides  they  thought 
that  they  were  about  to  be  treated  to  a  whole 
speech. 

Gilbert  McCormack's  thin  voice  now  chipped 
in  with  the  proposition  that  it  should  be  devoted 
to  "  a  sinking  fund."  He  had  often  heard  the 
phrase  used  at  a  meeting  of  the  Ballycullen  Board 
of  Guardians  and  not  really  knowing  what  it 
meant,  he  thought  it  was  the  right  thing  to  say 
here. 

"A  sinking  fund  for  what,  in  the  name  of 
God  ?  "  said  Michael,  stung  more  by  its  absolute 
unintelligibility  than  by  the  remark  itself.  One 
of  the  chorus,  the  tailor's  son,  made  a  poor  joke 
about  sinking  a  pump.  It  caused  a  laugh  of 
course  for  there  were  already  twenty-seven  barren 
pumps  in  Ballycullen  Union.  Gilbert  appeared 
quite  unable  to  explain  but  as  it  were  in  support 
of  his  proposition  he  began  to  stutter  further 
phrases  out  of  the  fortnightly  meeting  of  the 
Ballycullen  Board.  Queerly  enough,  some  of 
those  in  the  little  room  began  to  gape  at  him  in 
admiration.  Even  if  it  was  not  really  anything 
at  all  his  talk  sounded  like  something,  and  the 
reputation  of  the  Ballycullen  Board  for  "  dodg- 
ery "  was  so  widespread  that  after  all  by  very 
nature  of  this  thought  was  it  suggested  to  their 


A  POINT  AT  ISSUE  55 

minds  that  his  oblique  statement  might  really  con- 
tain more  at  bottom  than  the  more  direct  and 
powerful  pronouncement  of  Thomas  Cooney. 

The  moment  became  propitious  for  a  third  sug- 
gestion and  it  was  made  by  Ambrose  Donohue. 
It  had  already  been  prefaced  by  suggestive 
coughs  and  the  whispered  remark: 

"  I  wonder  what  has  Ambie  to  say?" 

"  I  think,  gentlemen,  it  is  a  great  chance  to 
have  the  Hall  fitted  up  with  a  new  floor  for 
dancing  and  a  touch  of  paint  on  the  walls  and 
things.  A  bit  of  swank,  you  know!  Swanks 
would  come  here  then  to  a  ball  if  we  had  one  and 
give  a  bit  of  a  tone  to  the  place  as  well  as  to 
everyone  that  had  a  hand  in  getting  it  up." 

This  was  well  said  for  Ambrose  Donohue.  It 
had  the  effect  of  flattering  all  without  offending 
any,  yet  it  stood  to  give  him  the  distinction  He  had 
always  aimed  at,  now  more  than  ever,  since  it 
would  seem  to  have  been  questioned  by  the  recent 
performance  of  Michael  Dempsey.  Also,  on  ac- 
count of  his  inclusive  profession  he  would  be 
given  both  jobs  of  flooring  and  painting  and 
thus  probably  most  of  the  money  would  find 
its  way  into  his  pocket.  On  the  surface  it 
sounded  as  the  announcement  of  a  sportsman  and 
with  the  kind  of  appeal  that  must  make  it  im- 
mediately popular.  The  thinly  veiled  sneer  he 
had  worn  since  the  entrance  to  the  room  of 


56       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

Michael  broadened  into  a  wide  smile  as  he  con- 
tinued: 

"  You  see,  even  if  nothing  more  than  invest- 
ment, it  ought  to  be  certainly  worth  while.  When 
we'd  have  the  proper  fixtures  set  up  we  could  give 
a  big  dance  for  profit,  for  '  the  Cause/  at  any 
time  and  a  little  left  by  every  time  we'd  have  a 
dance,  for  deterioration  of  floor,  walls,  etc.,  would 
provide  the  only  kind  of  sinking  fund  we  may 
need." 

Both  Thomas  Cooney  and  Gilbert  McCormack 
nodded  their  heads  at  the  points  where  considera- 
tion for  their  suggestions  was  so  magnificently 
expressed.  The  others  were  smiling  jubilantly, 
and  they  considered  Ambrose  Donohue  a  damned 
smart  fellow  entirely  to  have  thought  of  it.  It 
was  not  every  day  that  such  a  complete  plan  for 
their  own  upliftment  was  laid  before  them.  Their 
feeble  imaginations  struggled  suddenly  to  pic- 
ture themselves  as  captivating  gallants  dancing 
around  and  around  with  grand  girls  from  Castle- 
connor  and  Mullaghowen,  instead  of  dressing 
themselves  up  in  dirty  figarios  out  of  some  im- 
moral tenement  house  in  Dublin  and  then  striving 
to  disport  themselves  on  a  narrow,  dangerous 
stage  to  make  doubtful  pastime  for  all  the  grin- 
ning idiots  in  Ballycullen.  The  words  of  Ambrose 
continued  to  fall  psychologically  upon  the  mo- 
ment. 


A  POINT  AT  ISSUE  57 

"  If  we  went  on  doing  more  plays  I  think  that 
the  people  of  Ballycullen  would  jolly  soon  tire 
of  them.  Besides  I  don't  think  that  they  want 
much  of  this  Robert  Emmet  stuff  anyway. 
They're  a  bit  beyond  it,  don't  you  know?  It's  all 
very  well  for  galoots  out  far  in  the  country  that 
don't  know  any  better  but  for  a  smart  little  show 
like  Ballycullen  that's  getting  to  be  a  bit  of  all 
right.  I  think  now  that  my  suggestion  is  alto- 
gether the  more  practicable.  Do  I  express  your 
feelings,  boys?" 

"Hear!    Hear!" 

"Hear!  Hear!"  also  from  Thomas  Cooney 
and  Gilbert  McCormack. 

Michael  was  left  without  a  word  in  his  mouth 
so  successfully  had  he  been  cornered,  and  he  had 
not  been  given  the  opportunity  of  offering  a  single 
suggestion,  for  already  the  whole  arrangement 
had  been,  carried  above  his  head.  .  .  .  There 
ran  swiftly  through  his  mind  the  thought  of  all 
the  time  and  trouble  he  had  given  to  the  pro- 
duction of  this  play.  To  begin  with  how  he  had 
spent  many  weary  nights  in  striving  hard  to  talk 
the  bare  idea  into  them  and  then  the  difficulty  of 
finding  a  proper  place  for  rehearsal,  sometimes 
being  compelled  to  rehearse  along  the  road,  re- 
peating their  lines  between  one  another  as  they 
walked.  Also  as  they  came  nearer  the  night  of 
production  there  would  be  the  painful  necessity 


58       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

of  dragging  absent  male  members  out  of  the  pubs, 
and  the  female  members  from  the  intoxication 
of  gossip  in  the  little  holes  of  dressmaker's  shops. 
All  the  hopeless  indifference,  the  stupidity,  the 
despondence  which  he  was  obliged  to  remove  con- 
tinually by  an  enthusiasm  which  it  was  always 
difficult  to  assume  in  Ballycullen.  Then,  to  assist 
all  these  in  their  very  determined  efforts  to  defeat 
him  was  the  power  of  gossip,  the  terrible  tongue- 
tyranny  of  old  women  who  sat  in  remote  nooks 
in  the  village  prating,  prating  always.  .  .  . 
Sometimes  it  was  desperate  surely  and  none  knew 
the  utter  bitterness  of  his  struggle.  It  was  almost 
a  thing  of  ecstasy,  this  hidden  heroism,  and 
Michael,  as  he  went  about  it,  often  thought  of 
those  who  had  suffered  in  secret  silence  for  some 
dream  like  this  that  had  come  out  of  the  history 
of  Ireland.  .  .  .  Yet  it  was  the  only  way  he 
had  of  showing  his  love  in  this  poor  place.  He 
had  triumphed  even  unto  the  success  of  the  pre- 
vious night  and  it  was  directly  upon  that  little 
achievement  that  he  wished  to  build  higher  for 
the  enjoyment  of  Mirandolina  Con  way.  .  .  . 
And  here  now  was  a  sudden  defeat  after  he  had 
tried  so  very  hard  to  avert  defeat  —  the  gigantic 
sneer  which  would  spring  to  spread  itself  wide 
from  the  talk  of  the  old  women  now  because  he 
had  not  been  able  to  hold  on  to  his  small  triumph. 
It  was  his  very  success  that  had  caused  him  to 


A  POINT  AT  ISSUE  59 

make  the  big  mistake  of  his  life.  Hitherto  they 
had  borne  with  him  because  they  had  not  taken 
him  too  seriously,  but  now,  for  the  first  time, 
they  saw  in  him  a  fellow  with  lofty  aspirations,  a 
bit  of  a  brat  that  certainly  wanted  a  little  rough 
handling.  The  three  men  before  him  had  spoken 
on  behalf  of  the  feeling  which  had  been  created 
against  him  in  Ballycullen.  .  .  .  And  they 
had  done  their  work  well.  .  .  . 

Before  his  eyes  of  anger  passed  again  the 
vision  of  all  he  had  dreamt  of  doing.  He  thought 
last  night  that  he  had  increased  his  following 
from  the  handful  of  boys  who  sat,  in  imitation 
of  their  elders,  spitting  and  gabbling  around  the 
stove,  in  fact  that  he  had  created  a  great  impres- 
sion and  that  the  people  were  with  him.  That 
was  all  that  had  ever  seemed  wanting.  Just  to 
be  with  him  that  he  might  tell  them  all  he  had 
learned  about  Ireland,  all  he  had  thought  and 
dreamed.  ...  If  only  they  would  read  —  but 
in  this  connection  he  realised  immediately  the 
omnipotence  of  the  cursed  capitalised,  Anglicised 
press.  Of  course  they  never  read  anything  worth 
reading  but  very  often  they  went  to  concerts  and 
dramatic  entertainments,  and  the  thought  of  put- 
ting certain  kinds  of  plays  before  them  was  not 
without  its  wisdom.  Plays  in  which  aspects  of 
Irish  history  and  national  thought  in  keeping 
with  Sinn  Fein  principles  might  be  given,  gradu- 


60       JHE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

ally  sugar-coated  as  it  were  by  the  extraneous 
interest  of  dramatic  performance,  to  be  swal- 
lowed, possibly  to  the  extent  of  creating  a  genu- 
ine taste  and  enthusiasm  at  some  future  time  for 
the  ideas  themselves.  He  had  thought  of  a  Gae- 
lic Class  in  addition,  yet  had  felt  instinctively  that 
anything  of  the  kind  was  before  its  time  in  Bally- 
cullen.  But  he  might  just  as  well  have  tried  all 
now  as  well  as  the  part  he  had  so  carefully  nursed 
only  to  die  so  young.  The  dumbness  of  sudden 
defeat  was  upon  him  and  the  power  he  had  but 
temerariously  questioned  was  even  now  more  bru- 
tally strong  just  because  he  had  failed. 

After  the  way  in  which  Ambrose  Donohue  had 
put  it  nothing  more  could  be  said  and  his  way  of 
putting  it  also  was  such  that  it  seemed  perfectly 
ridiculous  that  anything  had  been  said  at  all. 
This  agreement  upon  the  point  at  issue  must  have 
appeared  so  perfectly  obvious  all  the  time.  Yet, 
curiously  commingled,  the  sigh  of  defeat  and  the 
shout  of  victory  were  in  the  air.  .  .  . 

The  meeting  ended  abruptly  and  Michael's 
face  was  hot  from  anger  and  confusion  as  he 
stumbled  out  into  the  street.  It  was  the  same 
old  muddy  place  lighted  by  the  street  lamps  of 
dream  no  longer.  In  the  light  of  a  new  moon  it 
appeared  coldly  naked.  Of  a  sudden  was  it 
starkly  plain  and  of  power  and  significance  in 
his  life,  although  a  little  while  since  he  had 


A  POINT  AT  ISSUE  61 

scarcely  seen  it  at  all  or  else  only  vaguely  as  part 
of  some  immortal  scene.  .  .  .  That  was  to- 
night too  just  before  he  had  parted  with  Miran- 
dolina.  To  think  that  he  would  have  nothing  at 
all  to  tell  her  at  the  end  of  the  long  morrow.  And 
she  would  have  heard  of  his  defeat.  In  fact 
already  the  rumour  was  spreading  as  to  what  was 
going  to  be  done  with  the  money  that  Michael 
Dempsey  had  made  out  of  "  Robert  Emmet."  As 
he  swung  quietly  around  Culligan's  corner  and 
down  to  the  little  house,  where  there  was  always 
an  immense  depression  on  his  mother  and  sister, 
he  could  hear  one  corner-boy  say  to  another. 

"  Well,  now  wasn't  he  a  common  idiot  anyway 
to  make  such  a  lot  of  money  for  them  to  have  the 
sport  out  of  it?" 

"  Sure  it  serves  him  damn  well  right,  the  great 
actor,  moryah:  D'ye  know  what  I'm  going  to 
tell  you?  If  fellows  like  that  wasn't  kept  in  their 
places  a  man  couldn't  live  in  Ballycullen." 


CHAPTER  VI 

A  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHER 

THE  old  deadness  was  upon  Marcus  Flynn's 
next  day.  Michael  came  out  from  behind 
the  counter  often  to  take  a  look  at  the 
muddy  street  of  Ballycullen.  Marcus  himself 
bustled  in  and  out  while  cursing  still  with  the  old 
ferocity.  He  had  already  heard  of  the  thing  that 
had  happened  and,  as  he  thought  it  over  and  over 
now,  it  appeared  more  and  more  in  the  nature  of  a 
personal  affront.  It  represented  a  triumph  for 
Thomas  Cooney  because  it  was  his  own  shop-boy, 
and  consequently  himself,  who  had  been  defeated. 
In  the  rage  of  his  foiled  spitefulness  a  perfect  fury 
possessed  him.  Everything  was  wrong,  every- 
thing was  going  to  hell,  as  he  put  it.  And  as 
there  was  no  one  else  in  the  shop  while  he  spoke 
so  fiercely  Michael  appeared  as  the  one  directly 
responsible  for  this  universal  damnation.  Every 
time  he  passed  in  or  out  he  would  hit  the  counter 
fiercely  with  his  fist  and  shout  hoarsely: 

"And  be  God,  Thomas  Cooney  is  a  bigger  man 
than  Robert  Emmet.  I  suppose  you  wouldn't  be- 
lieve that  now,  eh?" 

62 


A  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHER       63 

Towards  the  end  of  the  afternoon  his  awful 
visitations  began  to  decrease  in  number  and  in 
vehemence  and  Michael  surmised  from  past  ex- 
perience that  he  had  fled  from  the  torment  of  his 
narrow  heart  to  the  comfort  of  the  bottle  secre- 
tively in  his  own  room.  This  was  a  day  of  the 
week,  the  Tuesday,  when  few  customers  came 
into  the  shop  until  evening  and  Michael  had 
plenty  of  leisure  in  which  to  see  his  torment  re- 
flected in  the  muddy  pools  of  the  street.  The 
heavy  silence  which  held  everything  at  this 
hour  effectively  prevented  any  brave  thought  of 
life  from  disturbing  the  mind  of  Michael  towards 
the  holiness  of  hope.  This  death  in  life  was  of 
no  recent  occurrence  in  this  place.  He  rapidly 
figured  it  in  fugitive  glimpses  of  its  historical 
aspect. 

After  all,  and  in  spite  of  the  boasted  tradition 
of  the  courthouse,  that  place,  the  very  thought  of 
which  caused  such  a  recent  wound  of  the  memory, 
must  really  have  sent  few  heroes  to  the  scaffold 
in  '98.  On  the  contrary,  the  progenitors  of  its 
present  breed  must  have  gone  bowing  and  scrap- 
ing to  the  murdering  yeomen  as  they  came  riding 
through.  The  mean  villiany  of  the  act  of  Union 
had  called  forth  no  passionate  protest  from 
Ballycullen.  Of  Emmet's  Rebellion  they  had 
never  heard  for  long  years  after  it  had  happened. 
And  in  those  after  years,  that  dark  diminuendo 


64       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

of  Irish  history,  it  had  stood,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, behind  O'Connell,  a  contingent  which  was 
still  one  of  its  proudest  boasts  having  gone  with 
green  and  gold  flags  to  the  great  meeting  in  Tara. 
The  melodramatic  windiness  of  "  the  Liberator  " 
had  most  perfectly  expressed  the  heart  and  mind 
of  Ballycullen.  To  the  present  day  both  Thomas 
Cooney  and  Marcus  Flynn  would  tell  as  their  best 
stories  the  famous  flashes  of  wit  which  had  passed 
between  the  great  Dan  and  Biddy  Moriarity,  the 
nshwoman.  Ballycullen  had  condemned  as  one 
man  the  foolishness,  the  patent  foolishness  of  the 
Young  Ireland  Movement.  Its  geographical  situ- 
ation had  kept  it  from  suffering  during  the 
Famine  and  some  of  the  long  processions  of  carts 
with  food  for  export,  from  what  was  practically 
a  starving  country,  had  left  Ballycullen  undis- 
turbed, although  the  same  economic  outrage  had 
goaded  Smith  O'Brien  to  his  feeble  rebellion. 
Ballycullen's  contribution  to  the  Fenian  move- 
ment had  been  a  few  informers  whose  descendants 
were  now  amongst  the  most  respectable  parish- 
ioners. The  immense,  ramified  power  of  the 
middle  class,  the  allied  graziers,  shopkeepers  and 
strong  farmers,  had  effectively  stilled  any  notable 
outburst  here  during  the  days  of  the  Land  war. 
The  men  doomed  to  suffer  always  had  suffered 
then,  but  this  class  had  increased  its  prosperity. 
The  later  days  of  the  Parnell  split  had  stood  for 


A  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHER       65 

the  reveaiment  of  Ballycullen.  Lukewarm  in  its 
support  of  the  Chief  it  had  been  at  boiling  point 
in  its  antagonism.  Never  before  had  it  been 
known  to  take  up  any  cause  or  any  denial  of  a 
cause  with  the  same  enthusiasm.  It  had  broken 
the  few  poor  faithful  fools  like  Hugh  O'Donnell 
McCormack  and  Michael's  father,  Andrew  Demp- 
sey.  .  .  .  Later  still  it  had  twisted,  with  fine 
opportunist  agility,  and  become  a  constituent  por- 
tion of  "  the  solid  phalanx,"  whatever  that  might 
mean,  upon  the  side  of  Parnell's  old  party  re- 
organised. Perhaps  the  tyranny  of  the  mental 
state  which  had  caused  it  to  so  fiercely  admire 
O'Connell  was  heavy  upon  it  again  but  it  was  a 
fact  that  for  many  empty  years  it  had  hung 
anxiously  upon  the  pronouncements  of  "  the 
leaders  of  the  Irish  Race  at  home  and  abroad."  It 
had  contributed  of  its  best  to  the  hypnotised,  stag- 
nant, tragic  state.  Most  determinedly  had  it  met 
with  disfavour  the  co-operative  movement,  a  tall 
brown-bearded  man,  probably  "A.  E,"  who  now 
occasionally  reviewed  books  for  "  Sinn  Fein," 
getting  a  very  bad  reception  here  on  the  night  he 
had  called  a  little  meeting  to  tell  them  all  about 
it.  At  the  present  time  it  was  most  amazing  to 
contemplate  the  complete  agreement  which  existed 
between  the  aims  of  the  leaders  and  the  general 
opinion  of  this  place.  On  evenings  when  the 
paper  reported  a  great  speech  by  either  of  the 


66       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

Johns  —  Redmond  or  Dillon  or  T.  P.  O'Connor 
or  Joe  Devlin  —  young  men  and  old  mumbled 
rapturously  between  them  the  momentous  and 
golden  words.  .  .  .  Their  very  souls  seemed  to 
cling  desperately  to  this  queer,  perverted  ideal- 
ism. "  The  Old  House  in  College  Green  "  had 
become  the  Hy  Brazil  of  Ballycullen.  Failure  in 
any  man  at  all  to  experience  the  same  consuming 
enthusiasm  was  put  down  as  the  most  depraved 
factionism  and  a  sin  certainly  as  great,  if  not 
actually  greater,  in  their  eyes,  than  avowed  athe- 
ism. .  .  . 

It  was  not  a  little  strange,  Michael  thought,  out 
of  his  semi-political,  semi-historical  reverie,  that 
ere  now,  otherwise  and  less  admirably  he  must, 
because  of  what  was  in  him,  have  moved  inevit- 
ably into  conflict  with  this  absence  of  spirit.  It 
was  now  about  the  beginning  of  the  period  when 
John  Redmond  "  held  England  in  the  hollow  of 
his  hand  "  and  as  there  appeared  no  occasion  at 
all  to  doubt  the  immediate  result  the  utter  deprav- 
ity of  any  form  of  factionism  was  blackly  em- 
phasised. Sinn  Fein,  for  the  moment,  was  in 
abeyance.  But  here  and  there  were  men  working 
hard  to  keep  it  alive,  doing  little  things  such  as 
Michael  Dempsey  had  done  by  the  production  of 
the  play.  It  was  the  like  of  this,  in  the  tradition 
of  the  drunken  ballad  singers  and  the  wild  women 
of  the  roads,  that  had  blown  up  the  embers  al- 


A  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHER       67 

ways.  Now,  his  mind  clouded  by  the  past  and 
clouded  by  the  present,  was  he  reviewing  its  fail- 
ure reflected  in  the  muddy  pools  of  the  main  street 
of  Ballycullen.  .  .  . 

Somebody  was  whispering  at  his  elbow: 
"  I  saw  you  playing  Robert  Emmet  the  other 
night,  Michael,  and  it  was  grand,  grand.  But  of 
course  the  mouths  that  you  were  playing  it  for 
didn't  understand,  but  I  understood,  so  I  did,  be- 
cause I  read  in  the  history  of  Ireland  everything 
about  him  and  before  I  forgot  it  entirely  I  had 
off  his  speech  by  heart  and  could  sound  it  out  aye, 
nearly  as  well  as  yourself,  Michael.  And  it 
would  bring  me  a  power  of  drink,  too,  this  ac- 
complishment of  mine,  whenever  I'd  go  to  a  decent 
town  where  the  blood  of  Fenianism  still  stirs  in 
a  few  veins  but  of  course,  condemned  as  I  am  to 
live  in  this  sorrowful  place,  where  there's  scarcely 
a  mother's  son  with  a  bit  of  blood  in  him,  for 
want  of  exercise  it  went  out  of  my  mind  includ- 
ing most  of  my  knowledge  of  ancient  and  modern 
history  through  having  to  be  looking  at  them  day 
after  day,  the  narrow,  miserable  crew.  .  .  . 
Will  you  give  me  the  lend  of  tuppence,  Michael? 
I  hadn't  a'er  a  drink  yet  this  blessed  day." 

Michael  turned  to  look  at  Kevin  Shanaghan, 
one  of  the  strangest  figures  in  Ballycullen.  A 
man  who,  still  not  without  a  certain  glimmer  of 
intellect,  lived  from  pub  to  pub,  and  from  drink 


68       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

to  drink.  He  might  be  about  fifty,  but  neglect 
and  hunger  and  drink  had  added  to  his  years 
and  the  unshaven  gray  stubbles  upon  his  white, 
wasted  face  gave  him  the  look  of  a  man  who  had 
descended  past  all  hope.  And  the  look  in  his 
eyes  too  was  one  from  which  hope  had  fled.  It 
was  a  sad,  wistful,  famished  look  and  might  be 
that  of  a  man  who,  at  some  time  in  his  life,  had 
been  stricken  by  a  great  misfortune  from  which  he 
had  never  since  recovered.  But  there  was  one 
great  day  in  Ballycullen  and  Kevin  Shanaghan 
had  been  a  great  man  that  day.  It  was  the  day 
the  meeting  had  been  held  to  celebrate  the  triumph 
of  the  people  in  the  Land  War,  even  in  this  part 
of  Ireland. 

The  throngs  that  marched  four  deep  came  like 
detachments  of  victorious  armies  down  every 
road  into  Ballycullen  with  their  banners  blazing 
in  the  sun.  And  Kevin  Shanaghan  rode  at  the 
head  of  all  after  they  had  passed  into  one  great 
company  and  with  the  staff  laid  proudly  across 
his  shoulder  he  carried  a  huge  green  flag  with  a 
gold  harp  on  it. 

He  was  a  great  going  man,  as  they  said  in  those 
days,  a  gentleman  nearly,  and  sure  he  could  be 
really  one  if  he  liked,  for  he  had  more  than  a  drop 
of  the  noble  blood  and  as  well  a  fine,  lovely  farm 
of  rich  land.  He  used  to  be  most  beautifully 
dressed,  for  he  was  a  grand,  handsome  man  and 


A  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHER       69 

it  was  often  said  that  he  could  marry  a  land- 
lord's daughter  if  he  liked.  His  appearance 
would  remind  one  almost  of  a  likeness  of 
Meagher  of  the  Sword.  People  used  to  say  that 
his  name  would  go  down  to  history,  for  Michael 
Davitt  had  a  great  opinion  of  him.  There  used 
to  be  long  accounts  of  him  in  the  papers,  and 
full  reports  of  the  eloquent  speeches  he  used  to 
make  —  fine,  fiery  speeches  about  the  land  and 
about  the  poor,  downtrodden  people  of  Ireland. 
And  what  he  was  striving  to  do  for  the  people 
was  never  in  the  hope  of  any  reward  but  just  for 
the  pure  love  of  Ireland.  One  could  see  it  in  his 
very  face  and  feel  the  intense  fire  flashing  from 
his  eyes.  It  was  past  counting  what  he  must 
have  spent  in  "  the  Cause."  He  used  to  be  all  over 
the  country.  One  day  he  would  be  down  in  the 
wilds  of  Mayo,  another  day  at  a  meeting  in  the 
county  Wicklow  speaking  words  of  encourage- 
ment, words  of  anger  or  words  of  comfort  to  the 
people  as  they  might  need  them  and  as  the  case 
might  be. 

They  used  to  cheer  him  tremendously  when  he 
would  appear  in  public  life,  for  he  was  doing 
great  work  for  them  every  day  of  his  life,  showing 
clear  as  noonday  both  to  God  and  man  that  he 
loved  them  more  than  he  loved  himself.  It  used 
to  seem  too  as  if  he  wanted  to  pay  them  for  the 
privilege  of  being  allowed  to  give  up  all  his  time 


70       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

to  them.  He  would  always  head  the  list  of  sub- 
scriptions when  there  would  be  a  meeting  for  the 
formation  of  a  new  branch  of  the  Land  League. 
.  .  .  Kevin  Shanaghan  £5.  ...  Kevin  Shan- 
aghan  £10.  .  .  .  Kevin  Shanaghan  £20.  .  .  . 
Everyone  said,  to  be  sure,  that  he  was  a  true 
Irishman,  but  that  he  would  get  it  hard  to  stick 
it  at  that  rate.  .  .  . 

While  he  was  so  busy  looking  after  the  busi- 
ness of  all  the  landless  people  of  Ireland,  how 
could  he  be  minding  his  own  business,  they  said  ? 
He  had  parties  minding  his  land  for  him  that 
were  robbing  him  and  letting  everything  go  to  the 
bad.  The  day  of  the  great  meeting  in  Ballycullen 
should  have  been  the  proudest  of  his  life,  but 
everyone  said  that  there  was  something  on  the 
poor  fellow's  mind.  It  was  queer  indeed  and 
Ballycullen  in  the  day  of  its  deliverance  too,  as 
one  of  the  speakers  had  just  reminded  them. 
Maybe  he  felt  that  when  the  shouting  was  all  over 
he  would  be  face  to  face  with  his  own  troubles. 
.  .  .  But  sure  it  was  the  grandest  thing  in  the 
world  to  be  standing  there  on  the  same  platform 
with  Michael  Davitt  himself  who  had  always  a 
fierce  expression  and  one  sleeve  empty.  . 

When  Kevin  Shanaghan  rose  to  his  feet  the 
whole  world  seemed  filled  with  the  tumult  of 
cheering. 


A  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHER       71 

"  Men  of  Ballycullen,"  he  said,  "  we're  at  the 
end  of  the  long  fight  and  the  day  is  won." 

The  cheering  rose  so  tremendous  with  his  first 
words  that  for  nearly  half-an-hour  he  could  not 
get  to  say  another  word.  He  stood  there  like  a 
statue  just  as  if  they  were  after  putting  up  a 
monument  to  his  memory  in  Ballycullen.  It  was 
a  strange  thing  that  seemed  to  bring  him  back  to 
life.  ...  A  girl  on  the  outskirts  of  the  crowd 
waved  a  green  silk  handkerchief  and  he  smiled, 
but  there  seemed  to  be  something  very  sorrowful 
in  his  face  even  then.  .  .  .  When  he  opened  his 
mouth  again  he  let  such  a  flood  of  eloquence  out 
of  him  as  made  the  people  say  that  Kevin  Shan- 
aghan  was  after  making  the  greatest  speech  of 
his  life.  Then  the  throngs  made  way  for  Michael 
Davitt  and  himself  and  they  drove  off  in  an  open 
carriage,  the  people  going  absolutely  mad  and 
they  in  return  raising  their  hats  for  all  the  world 
like  two  kings.  .  .  . 

It  was  not  long  until  Kevin  Shanaghan  had  to 
part  with  his  fine,  lovely  farm,  but  what  broke 
his  heart  completely  was  that  the  girl  he  said  he 
was  very  fond  of  broke  away  from  him  just  as 
soon  as  the  word  began  to  go  around  that  he  was 
going  down.  It  preyed  on  his  mind  a  great  deal 
and  drove  most  of  the  patriotic  fire  out  of  him. 
He  did  not  go  to  so  many  National  meetings  after 
that  and  of  course  his  subscriptions  here  and  there 


72       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

were  something  smaller,  for  he  had  only  a  little 
income  coming  to  him  in  return  for  all  the  fine 
land  he  was  after  parting  with.  He  had  little 
to  do  but  talk  all  day  long  about  the  way  he  was 
after  wasting  his  life.  Between  all  he  became 
a  kind  of  queer  in  himself.  He  used  to  move  a 
great  deal  and  very  quietly  about  the  fields  talk- 
ing to  the  men  who  were  after  getting  fixed  in  the 
land.  Some  of  them  had  pity  for  him  but  most 
of  them  did  not  seem  to  care.  "  Why  didn't  he 
mind  his  own  grand  farm  when  he  had  it  in- 
stead of  speechifying  and  idioting  around  the 
country?"  they'd  say.  It  used  to  hurt  him,  for 
often  he  would  go  the  road  muttering  to  himself 
like  a  madman,  "  The  soul  is  gone  out  of  them ! 
The  soul  is  gone  out  of  them! " 

Then  he  turned  to  drink  to  lift  up  his  mind,  for 
he  was  after  getting  very,  very  quiet  in  himself. 
He  would  never  be  out  of  the  public-house,  where 
he  might  be  seen  the  whole  day  long  with  a  bit 
of  a  newspaper  in  his  hand,  wasting  his  time 
reading  some  speech  or  another  out  of  it  to  a  lot 
of  fools  who  would  be  only  grinning  in  their 
sleeves  all  the  time.  .  .  .  It  is  there  he  would 
be  always  with  a  dirty  collar  round  his  neck  and 
an  inch  of  beard  on  his  face  and  the  front  of  his 
waistcoat  all  slobbery  and  shiny.  .  .  .  But 
whenever  there  would  be  any  sort  of  a  little  meet- 
ing at  all  in  Ballycullen  the  stewards  would  have 


A  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHER       73 

enough  to  do  to  keep  him  off  the  platform.  "  God 
knows,  but  it's  pathetic,"  he'd  say,  "  to  hear  these 
poor,  halting  fellows  striving  to  stir  the  people. 
But  sure  there's  nothing  in  them  now  that  can 
be  stirred  even  if  they  were  able  to  do  it  itself,  no 
spirit.  Lord  God,  to  think  of  the  mighty  gather- 
ings of  yore  and  how  they  used  to  respond  so  in- 
stantaneously to  the  very  touch  of  the  sound  of 
my  voice.  But  they  got  the  land  —  so  what  do 
they  care  now  about  the  noble  cry  of  nationality? 
And  it  was  I  myself  that  had  a  big  hand  in  de- 
stroying their  souls."  This  was  the  way  he  would 
be  always  mumbling  to  himself  at  a  meeting, 
standing  there  so  quietly,  his  eyes  running  water 
and  his  mouth  dribbling  like  that  of  a  young 
child.  Then  sometimes  he  would  let  a  mad 
screech  out  of  him  that  no  one  in  Ballycullen 
could  ever  understand :  "  A  wasted  life,  a  blas- 
phemy of  life !  Oh,  Jesus,  lift  up  my  life  again ! " 
In  Ballycullen  no  one  ever  thought  of  what 
this  man  had  once  been,  for  he  was  now  merely 
Kevin  Shanaghan,  "  the  bowsie."  Having  no  pur- 
pose in  life  he  had  effected  something  in  the  na- 
ture of  a  transvaluation  of  Ballycullen's  valu^ 
ation  of  him  and  had  become  a  kind  of  philoso- 
pher, particularly  on  the  political  side.  .  .  . 
Thus  it  might  be  that  he  had  a  purpose  in  this 
place  after  all,  for  often  as  he  stood  wasting  his 
life  over  a  pint  in  some  pub,  he  would  say  a 


74       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

thing  which  those  standing  by  would  treat  with 
indifference  as  coming  from  a  person  of  no  con- 
sequence, but  a  few  days  or  a  week  or  probably 
a  year  later,  if  his  mind  had  thought  it  worthy 
of  notice,  he  would  have  seen  such  people  acting 
as  it  were  in  obedience  to  the  ideas  which  had 
blown  casually  out  of  his  philosophy  of  life  and 
the  almost  God  like  way  in  which  he  laughed 
over  the  political  rages  of  his  time.  It  was  thus 
that  his  life  had  been  lifted  up  again.  In  this 
way,  remotely  as  it  might  seem,  did  he  exercise  a 
definite  influence  upon  the  life  of  Ballycullen 
towards  its  prosperity  and  upon  his  own  life 
towards  its  decline;  and  they  became  more  and 
more  contemptuous  of  him,  yet  was  there  the  same 
wan  smile  upon  his  face  always  as  he  observed 
their  doings.  "A  fool,"  they  called  him,  yet  he 
knew  a  wisdom  which  all  the  mean  struggle  of 
their  lives  had  prevented  them  attaining.  His 
simple  anxiety  was  for  sufficient  money  to  keep 
him  "  a  kind  of  foolish  "  always,  the  only  condi- 
tion to  which  drink  was  able  to  bring  him  now. 
When  he  was  "  a  kind  of  foolish  "  he  dropped  the 
best  things  out  of  his  mind  and  was  most  success- 
fully blinded  to  the  sight  of  Ballycullen.  .  .  . 
Michael  now  put  his  hand  in  his  pocket  and 
gave  him  a  sixpence.  As  Kevin  Shanaghan 
moved  away  in  the  direction  of  Thomas  Cooney's 
Michael  said  to  himself: 


A  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHER       75 

"And  that's  what  a  place  like  Ballycullen  is 
fit  to  make  of  a  man  of  intellect,  who  was  once  a 
man  of  patriotism  and  purpose  as  well!  ': 

Then  he  turned  in  from  the  door  to  endure  the 
shop  of  Marcus  Flynn  until  closing  time. 


CHAPTER  VII 

A  REBEL 

A  FEW  hours  later,  as  he  took  the  quiet 
way  beneath  the  ivy  boughs,  it  seemed 
that  his  little  brave  effort  to  snatch 
Ballycullen  from  itself  had  ended.  It  was 
scarcely  possible  that  either  Mirandolina  or  he 
should  ever  feel  the  same  thrill  in  the  presence 
of  one  another  again.  The  little  link,  by  which 
he  had  hoped  to  unite  his  own  life  and  hers  with 
the  olden,  beautiful  life  of  Ireland,  had  snapped 
beyond  repair.  Mirandolina  would  know  as  she 
came  along  to  meet  him  that  for  the  present  at 
least  Ballycullen  had  beaten  him  in  his  attempt  to 
climb  beyond  it.  And  he  felt  further  that  it  was 
in  the  nature  of  women  to  be  impatient  of 
failure.  .  .  . 

This  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  features 
of  the  place,  that  the  absence  of  two  from  one  an- 
other for  even  a  day  might  successfully  under- 
mine the  fondest  love  or  the  deepest  friendship  by 
the  mean  light  in  which  Ballycullen  would  make 
either,  out  of  its  malevolence,  appear  to  one  an- 
other in  the  meantime.  She  was  later  by  many 

76 


A  REBEL  77 

minutes  than  the  appointed  time  and  there  was 
something  of  hesitation  in  her  manner  as  she  ap- 
proached him.  There  was  an  awkward  silence 
upon  both  for  what  seemed  a  long  while.  Then, 
quite  suddenly,  she  arrived  at  the  point  with  al- 
most unnecessary  abruptness.  She  began  to 
speak  of  the  awful  gloominess  of  Ballycullen  in 
the  long  evenings  and  that  wouldn't  it  be  grand 
when  the  dance  hall  was  fixed  up?  It  would  be 
some  pleasure  to  turn  to  an  odd  time.  Wasn't  it 
very  up-to-date  on  the  part  of  Ambrose  Donohue 
to  think  of  it?  Begad,  Ballycullen  would  be  very 
swanky  then  and  would  compare  with  the  best  of 
places  like  Castleconnor  and  Mullaghowen. 

The  mind  of  a  woman  after  all  affords  many 
corrective  contrasts  to  the  romantic  mind  of  a 
man,  and  although  Mirandolina  had  been  moved 
to  gladness  by  his  talk  last  night  it  was  very  prob- 
ably because  her  mind  had  dwelt  upon  the  aspect 
of  his  triumph  which  promised  further  little 
triumphs  for  her  in  the  days  to  come.  .  .  .  But 
already  she  had  begun  to  picture  herself,  for  much 
the  same  reasons,  as  moving  in  the  new  scene 
which  would  be  created,  although  the  plan  had 
been  snatched  out  of  Michael's  hand  to  be  made 
at  once,  in  the  promise  it  represented,  a  part  of  all 
the  West  British  vulgarity  which  was  so  alien  to 
his  mind.  .  .  . 

He  would  have  had  no  direct  hand  in  doing 


78       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

all  this,  although  it  would  appear  that  he  was  the 
one  mainly  responsible.  He  thought,  as  they  re- 
mained silent,  that  he  might  be  compelled  to  ac- 
company her  to  some  of  the  dances,  going  there  in 
half-hearted  acquiescence  without  enthusiasm  or 
hope  of  enjoyment.  He  grew  more  darkly  and 
more  sadly  silent.  .  .  .  She  seemed  to  be  laugh- 
ing in  her  heart  at  his  very  discomfiture. 

Suddenly  she  had  pity  and  ventured  an  ex- 
planation of  her  coldness.  She  told  him  of  the 
spiteful  relish  with  which  the  news  had  been 
broken  to  her,  of  how  all  the  day  long  in  the 
shop  women  and  girls  had  been  dropping  broad 
hints  for  no  other  purpose,  it  would  seem,  than  to 
wound  her  in  her  thought  of  him.  Of  how  even 
Ambrose  Donohue  himself  had  come  into  the  shop 
upon  such  a  slight  excuse  to  make  a  big  fellow  of 
himself  in  her  eyes  by  holding  forth  at  great 
length  about  what  he  was  going  to  do  to  brighten 
up  Ballycullen.  She  told  him  exactly  of  the  way 
he  had  spoken  to  her: 

"  This  patriotism  and  preaching  to  the  people 
even  in  Robert  Emmet  plays  is  only  a  cod.  What 
more  does  it  do  at  any  time  only  rise  a  few  cheers 
and  just  as  many  jeers  out  of  a  lot  of  grinning 
idiots  that  don't  understand  or  want  to  under- 
stand? What  we  all  want  is  a  bit  of  fun,  a  bit  of  a 
dance.  Life  is  too  short  to  bother  too  much  about 
it  or  about  Ireland.  Just  to  make  the  best  of  it 


A  REBEL  79, 

and  not  to  take  it  too  seriously  ought  to  be  our 
ideal.  Sure  if  you  were  to  become  the  greatest 
patriot  in  Ireland,  a  second  Parnell  for  instance, 
they'd  throw  dirt  in  your  eyes  in  the  end  just  as 
they  did  with  him.  The  man  that  would  try  to 
lift  Ireland  out  of  itself  that  way  was  only  a 
bloody  fool  for  himself." 

"  A  bloody  fool ! "  It  was  the  most  expressible 
epithet  of  derision  and  degradation  in  Ballycul- 
len.  Kevin  Shanaghan,  that  fallen  and  besotted 
man,  was  a  typical  example  of  its  correct  applica- 
tion. 

As  she  clung  to  him  he  knew  that  her  sympathy 
was  sincere  although  he  felt  also  that  it  was  of  the 
nature  of  a  woman  to  be  glad  only  of  the  suc- 
cess of  her  man.  .  .  .  Always  eager  to  feel  this 
subtle  correspondence  it  almost  seemed,  because 
of  his  own  sadness  in  the  desolation  of  his  pride 
before  the  eyes  of  his  girl,  that  hope  of  final 
triumph  had,  for  the  moment,  been  put  away  as 
an  ended  longing  from  the  mind  of  Ireland.  .  .  . 

Although  he  tried  to  talk  on  of  other  things 
she  did  not  show  much  wish  to  linger  with  him 
and  he  was  not  without  a  certain  thankfulness 
that  this  was  so.  He  was  about  to  make  an  ac- 
customed retreat  for  a  little  comfort.  The  power 
of  Ballycullen  was  driving  him  remorselessly  to 
this,  it  suddenly  seemed,  even  as  it  had  driven 
Kevin  Shanaghan  to  drink.  „  .  . 


80       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

They  parted  quietly  and  soon  he  was  hurrying 
along  a  narrow  road  where  there  were  clusters 
of  labourer's  cottages.  Already  he  had  often  gone 
like  this,  but  never  quite  in  such  a  hurry  as  to- 
night, to  the  house  of  Connor  Carberry,  an  old 
broken  man  in  whom  the  flame  had  been  lit  in 
'67  and  so  brightly  that  the  power  of  Ballycullen, 
or  the  wide  world  through  which  he  had  wan- 
dered, had  not  sufficed  to  quench  it. 

Although  it  stood  in  the  midst  of  rich  fields  the 
cottage  always  gave  one  the  impression  of  loneli- 
ness and  desolation.  Even  the  richest  vegetation 
around  it  at  the  noon  of  summer,  the  brightest 
blossoms  of  lilac  and  hawthorn  springing 
bravely  from  the  green  profusion  of  the  low  hedge 
before  the  door,  the  sunlight  of  the  Irish  eve- 
nings making  golden  its  crooked  windows  never 
succeeded  wholly  in  driving  away  this  forlorn 
look.  It  seemed  as  if  someone  that  the  cottage 
knew  well  had  beaten  a  broken  retreat  to  the 
loneliness  of  this  quiet  place. 

And  yet,  one  is  never  right  even  in  what  seems 
the  most  indisputable  surmise  of  the  self-evident, 
for  it  could  not  be  said  after  all  that  Connor  Car- 
berry  was  a  lonely,  forsaken  man.  He  too  had  his 
good  comrades  in  the  end  of  his  days,  the  friends 
to  whom  he  whispered  out  his  soul,  and  what  can 
any  man  have  more,  even  one  who  has  been  rich 
and  great  and  had  the  biggest  share  of  the  world? 


A  REBEL  81 

Yet  no  one  had  ever  seen  his  companions  come 
here  of  an  evening,  with  no  Heraclitus  of  his  heart 
had  he  ever  "  tired  the  sun  with  talking  and  sent 
him  down  the  sky."  Passers-by  who  would  see 
him  standing  sometimes  at  the  door  gazing  out 
over  the  luscious  land  would  speak  their  pity  of 
the  wan,  famished  look  upon  his  time-scarred 
face  and  say  that  Connor  Carberry  was  the  lone- 
liest poor  man  in  all  the  world.  He  had  himself 
to  thank  for  it,  they  said,  for  when  he  had  re- 
turned here  after  his  long  sojourn  in  the  Bush  of 
Australia  many  an  old  man  had  limped  up  here 
from  the  village  or  across  the  fields  in  the  eve- 
nings to  talk  about  their  young  days  together  with 
Connor  Carberry.  But  the  experiment  had  not 
been  successful,  and  the  offering  of  their  friend- 
ship and  their  remembrance  had  not  been  ac- 
cepted. In  Connor  Carberry  they  had  discovered 
the  strangest  thing  that  may  befall  a  man,  they 
saw  one  who  had  forgotten,  and  after  all  what 
has  an  old  man  but  his  memory  and  the  things 
he  would  be  remembering  of  his  youth?  .  .  . 
As  they  came  into  the  cottage  and  sat  down,  their 
bodies  humped  heavily  over  their  crooked  sticks, 
one  by  one,  and  for  many  an  evening  before  they 
had  finally  grown  tired  of  trying  to  make  him 
respond.  A  little  light,  the  joyous  light  of  the 
great  power  of  memory,  had  welled  into  their 
rheumy  eyes.  .  .  . 


82        THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

"  D'ye  remember,  Connor,  the  ferocious  game 
you  played  the  day  of  the  great  match  between 
Castleconner  and  Mullaghowen?  .  .  .  " 

"  D'ye  remember  the  escape  we  had  that  dark 
night  in '67?  ..." 

"  Don't  you  remember  the  dances  and  all  the 
fine,  lovely  girls  you  used  to  have  breaking  their 
hearts  after  you  them  times,  for  you  had  the 
lightest  foot  of  e'er  a  lad  in  the  parish  .  .  .  ? 
And  musha,  don't  you  remember  Martha  Doyle. 
Sure  she  was  the  handsomest  craythureen  ever 
lived.  Meybe  you  never  knew  that  she  waited 
for  you  for  long  years  after  you'd  gone  to  Aus- 
tralia. She  had  some  notion,  I  suppose,  that 
you'd  send  for  her,  so  she  never  had  a  mind  for 
anyone  else,  for  it  took  the  two  of  yous  to  make  a 
dancing  pair  .  .  .  ? " 

No  word  from  Connor  Carberry  sitting  there 
so  silently  upon  the  other  stool,  no  sudden  stir  of 
recollection  to  make  his  eyes  as  bright  as  theirs. 
There  seemed  to  be  some  great  grief  in  his  mind 
across  which  their  regard  for  him  as  friends  of 
their  youth  could  not  make  a  bridge.  ...  No 
word  from  him  at  all,  only  queer  talk  of  black 
men  and  Chinamen,  and  Japs,  and  all  the  other 
heathens  with  whom  he  had  sojourned  in  one  of 
the  wild  places  of  the  world.  .  .  . 

They  had  grown  tired  of  trying  to  be  a  solace 
to  his  loneliness  and  a  comfort  to  his  friendless 


A  REBEL  83 

age  here  in  this  little  place  where  he  had  been 
born.  So  no  one  ever  came  into  the  cottage  now, 
yet  Connor  Carberry  still  retained  the  brightest 
power  of  his  soul  and  he  was  not  lonely.  They 
thought  maybe,  that  he  was  a  queer  man  who  had 
no  regard  in  his  heart  for  his  country  or  the 
friends  of  his  youth,  an  inhuman  man.  God 
knows  but  it  was  this  terrible  thing  they  must 
think  of  him,  an  inhuman  man  that  was  best  left 
to  himself. 

They  did  not  know  of  that  awful  period  in  his 
life,  the  dark  blank  when  his  mind  and  his  blood 
seemed  to  stand  still  for  very  sorrow  on  leaving 
Ireland.  Then  there  had  flowed  in  upon  his  con- 
sciousness the  immense  loneliness  of  "  the  Bush," 
when  for  long  periods  he  might  only  talk  to  his 
dog  and  his  horse  and  the  sun-scorched  trees.  It 
was  to  those  dumb  things  he  had  whispered  all 
his  heart's  love  of  Ireland,  whispered  through  the 
agony  of  his  tears,  whispered,  sang,  aye  even 
shouted  madly  to  dumbness  until  the  very  voice 
of  his  love  grew  dumb  within  him  again.  .  .  . 

It  was  their  fancy  to  think  that  he  could  not 
remember  now  beyond  that  dark  night  that  had 
fallen  upon  his  mind,  he  could  not  recollect,  he 
could  not  refashion  in  fancy  the  scenes  of  his 
youth,  he  could  not  make  good  comrades  of  the 
old,  old  men  like  himself.  .  .  .  But  he  was 
not  without  his  good  comrades  although  these 


84       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

were  unnoticed  by  human  eyes,  for  they  were  not 
human.  .  .  .  There  wereTrixie  and  Peg  and 
Lord  John.  They  were  all  that  he  wanted  to  be 
talking  with  through  the  length  of  the  days  that 
were  left  him.  .  .  . 

Trixie  was  a  fine  cat  still,  although  her  left 
fore-leg  had  been  cut  away  by  a  trap  in  the 
woods  of  the  Hon.  Reginald  Moore. 

"  My  noble  Persian  kitten,  my  noble  Trixie," 
he  would  say  as  she  purred  upon  his  shoulder. 
"  Trixie  must  have  her  saucer  of  milk  now,  and 
then  we'll  have  a  talk  about  Australia,  a  great 
chat  about  the  wild,  ungodly  places  of  Australia." 

The  contented  purr  of  Trixie  would  tell  him 
that  he  had  an  attentive  listener  to  the  long  same- 
ness of  his  narrative  of  "  the  Bush."  He  could 
tell  her  all.  He  could  tell  her  of  the  gorgeous 
women  he  had  seen.  .  .  . 

Long  before  Trixie  had  grown  tired  Peg  would 
come  out  of  her  box  near  the  fire  and  begin  to 
peck  about  his  feet. 

"  My  lovely  checker  hen,"  he  would  say,  and 
putting  Trixie  gently  down  he  would  take  a  hand- 
ful of  meal  and  as  she  fed  out  of  his  hand  he 
would  say  his  say  to  her  about  the  bright  birds 
he  had  seen  flitting  through  the  dark  trees  and 
of  how  their  rich  plumage  had  splashed  his  loneli- 
ness with  colour.  The  tenderness  of  Peg  and  all 


A  REBEL  85 

her  delicate  movement  about  his  hand  would  re- 
call all  the  tender  thoughts  he  had  had  in  exile. 

Then,  by  the  time  that  Peg  was  ready,  that  is, 
sufficiently  fed  and  sufficiently  regaled  by  his 
conversation,  to  be  put  back  in  her  box  which  he 
also  called  "  her  bed,"  for  Peg  was  a  kind  of 
delicate  bedridden  hen,  there  would  be  loud  call- 
ing quacks  from  the  outhouse  at  the  back. 

"  Lord  John,"  he  would  say,  "  Lord  John  is 
hungry  now,  the  poor  fellow!"  Often  as  he 
mixed  up  the  feed  in  a  little  dish  he  would  smile 
as  he  thought  of  how  well  he  had  christened  Lord 
John  after  Lord  John  Rochfort-Pelham  whom 
he  had  fought  to  the  death  beneath  a  starry  sky  in 
the  very  lonely  midst,  it  would  seem,  of  all  the 
lonely  sheep-runs.  .  .  . 

This  other  Lord  John,  this  champion  Ayles- 
bury,  could  listen  well  to  his  wild  tales  of  fight- 
ing and  drinking,  and  his  strange  and  startling 
accounts  of  the  many  times  his  very  blood  had 
tried  so  wildly  to  burst  the  bondage  of  his  loneli- 
ness. A  loud  quack !  quack !  of  enthusiasm  well 
placed  here  and  there  was  Lord  John's  way  of 
showing  his  appreciation  of  this  long  account  of 
how  the  brute  had  often  leaped  to  life  in  Connor 
Carberry  but  which  the  years  had  now  so  well 
subdued. 

It  was  only  to  these,  his  good  comrades,  that 
it  had  been  given  to  know  what  Connor  Car- 


86       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

berry  had  lost  to  his  soul  and  won  to  his  soul 
during  his  long  years  of  exile.  .  .  .  But  every 
man,  they  say,  has  two  lives,  two  souls,  which 
it  takes  different  men  and  different  moments  to 
evoke  in  turn. 

Connor  Carberry  was  a  proud,  valiant  man 
still,  even  in  his  loneliness  and  defeat,  and  as  he 
sat  here  in  his  quiet  cottage,  by  a  poor  fire  of 
an  evening  the  lights  which  danced  across  his 
furrowed,  wasted  face  seemed  to  mirror  some  of 
the  beauty  he  had  seen.  Although  lonely  to  all 
seeming,  he  was  not  lonely,  for  he  dwelt  remote 
with  those  who  had  died  for  Ireland.  The  only 
one  who  ever  came  now  to  make  a  ceilidh  with 
him  in  the  evenings  was  Michael  who  merely 
came  as  it  were  to  listen  to  his  rambling  talk 
which  sometimes  grew  into  the  semblance  of  con- 
versation with  those  who  were  dead  and  gone. 
.  .  .  They  were  a  right  goodly  company  be- 
ginning with  Owen  Roe  O'Neill  and  including 
Charles  Stewart  Parnell.  His  own  defeat  did  not 
seem  sufficient,  for  nightly  here,  in  the  emptiness 
of  his  old  age,  he  lived  through  their  lives  and 
endured  their  struggles  and  defeats.  Had  they 
known  of  this  at  all  they  would  have  said  that 
his  mind  had  been  touched,  God  help  us,  by  the 
long,  long  years  he  had  spent  out  in  the  hot  sun 
of  Australia. 

"  Comparing  himself  to  the  great  patriotic  men 


A  REBEL  87 

of  Ireland  he  does  be,  the  poor,  unfortunate  fel- 
low!" 

It  was  thus  that  he  would  have  been  fixed  in 
the  minds  of  his  neighbours  and  when  he  rose  up 
raging  at  the  end  of  a  long  night's  brooding  and 
communing  and  shouted:  "Oh,  Lord!  Oh,  God, 
when  will  it  all  end,  dear  Christ  Almighty?  " 
he  was  very  like  a  madman  surely.  He  had 
suffered  in  exile  for  Ballycullen  but  Ballycullen 
was  quite  forgetful  of  his  sacrifice,  yet  he  was 
full  of  forgiveness  of  this  offense  against  him- 
self in  his  fierce,  angry  love  of  Ireland.  Even 
just  as  he  seemed  to  exist  remotely  his  sentiments 
sustained  themselves  without  any  reference  to 
reason  or  any  practicable  scheme  of  well-being  for 
his  country.  Indeed  he  had  scarcely  any  com- 
prehension of  the  present  at  all,  for  his  mind 
seemed  almost  incapable  of  removing  itself  out  of 
the  past.  And  how  well  he  had  concealed  his 
memory  from  Ballycullen !  What  little  reality  may 
have  been  in  him  must  have  died  with  Parnell  but 
often,  on  a  night  like  this,  he  would  break  out  of 
his  dream  for  a  moment  and  say  a  memorable 
thing  to  Michael: 

"  A  man  never  died  for  Ireland,  nor  a  man 
never  went  to  jail  for  Ireland,  nor  a  man  never 
spent  long  years  of  torture  away  from  Ireland, 
nor  a  man  never  suffered  in  any  way  for  Ireland 


88       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

in  vain,  and  that's  the  God's  honest  truth  I'm 
telling  you,  young  fellow." 

Spoken  again  with  the  old  intense  sadness  these 
words  seemed  on  this  night  of  his  life  to  hold  a 
sense  of  holy  comfort  for  Michael  that  was  very 
sweet  to  his  ear.  But  as  Connor  Carberry  re- 
lapsed into  his  raving,  a  thread  of  grey  question- 
ing seemed  to  run  through  his  mind  as  he  listened, 
sitting  on  a  low  stool  and  looking  also  into  the 
poor  fire.  .  .  .  Through  his  very  intensity  ap- 
peared the  very  sadness  of  the  obsession  of  this 
old  man  by  the  heroic  side  of  all  the  queer  busi- 
ness of  Irish  history.  There  was  a  rapturous  ex- 
altation about  all  this  beautiful  and  pure  dying, 
but  was  there  not  something  further  in  this  con- 
nection which  the  present  trend  of  his  thoughts 
was  compelling  him  to  feel?  Could  England  be 
such  a  fiendish  enemy  after  all  when  it  had  not 
succeeded  in  trampling  out  this  heroic  spirit  down 
through  all  the  years?  Those  who  had  sold 
themselves  as  common  informers  or  worse,  if  any- 
thing could  be,  although  sufficiently  formidable 
in  numbers  were,  after  all,  comparatively  few,  but 
what  of  the  greater  traitorous  element  in  the  heart 
of  Ireland  itself,  the  murderous  apathy  which  had 
crushed  more  powerfully,  more  subtly  than  the 
ostentatious  tyranny  of  Britannia  because  it  had 
so  successfully  remained  unseen?  That  was  the 
ghostly,  silent,  deadly  thing  which  enslaved.  Yet 


A  REBEL  89 

was  it  the  stuff  that  Connor  Carberry  talked,  even 
when  mouthed  meaninglessly  by  politicians,  that 
had  blinded  the  eyes  of  Ireland  to  this  terrible 
thing.  But  it  was  hard  to  listen  to  Connor  Car- 
berry  and  remain  unmoved.  .  .  . 

Surely  Sinn  Fein  included  a  quality  other  than 
this  dwelling  hopelessly  upon  old  unhappy  things, 
the  bitterness  of  defeat,  the  sad  endings  of  broken 
men.  This  was  its  constructive  side  which  spoke 
bravely  of  the  building  of  the  nation  from  within, 
the  goodly  thing  which  cometh  of  an  honest  con- 
science and  a  man's  right  hand.  Their  in- 
dustries might  be  revived,  their  language,  they 
might  attain  to  a  certain  decency  in  public  life, 
they  might  come  to  control  their  affairs  if  they 
desired  it  greatly.  ...  If  only  all  the  people  of 
Ireland  could  be  made  to  feel  the  truth  and  beauty 
of  Sinn  Fein!  If  that  could  not  win  them  na- 
tional salvation  nothing  surely  in  God's  world 
could !  It  would  be  sufficiently  strong  and  proud 
too  to  throttle  even  the  subtle,  traitorous  element 
in  a  death  grip ! 

Yet  here  was  he,  a  Sinn  Feiner,  fled  from  the 
tyranny  of  a  portion  of  Ireland  at  the  present  time, 
hoping  to  win  a  little  consolation  from  the  past  as 
remembered  by  the  wild  mind  of  this  sad  man. . . . 

He  wondered  momentarily  was  Sinn  Fein,  for 
all  its  brave  show  of  hopefulness  for  the  better- 
ment of  the  present,  really  dependent  in  its  essence 


90       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

upon  a  sense  of  the  past.  .  .  .  To  be  here 
listening  to  Connor  Carberry  was  indeed  very 
like  the  way  of  Kevin  Shanaghan  solacing  him- 
self by  drinking  in  a  pub.  ...  It  was  an  at- 
tempt to  win  the  comfort  of  forgetfulness.  Yet  it 
was  something  to  feel  that  he  would  go  from  this 
place  with  his  dream  annealed  and  just  as  if  noth- 
ing had  happened  to  hurt  its  loveliness.  And  he 
knew  that  when  Connor  Carberry  would  rise  at 
the  end  of  his  long  monologue  to  lunge  savagely 
at  the  door  with  the  rusty  imitation  of  a  pike  he 
had  hidden  under  the  stairs,  not  even  the  flicker 
of  a  smile  would  disturb  the  calm  intensity  of  the 
trance-like  emotion  which  would  be  mirrored  on 
his  own  face. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

INCIDENTS  OF  THE  DANCE 

THROUGH  the  remainder  of  the  winter  of 
1913-14  there  was  scarcely  anything 
spoken  of  in  Ballycullen  but  the  new  hall 
they  were  making  out  of  the  old  courthouse.  This 
notable  attempt  at  transformation  seemed  to  ab- 
sorb the  activities  of  the  villagers.  Apart  alto- 
gether from  the  admirable  ambition  to  see  a  place 
of  amusement  in  their  native  village  there  was  not 
a  man  in  Ballycullen  but  was  making  his  bit  out 
of  it  somehow,  men  like  Thomas  Cooney  and 
Marcus  Flynn  who  sold  building  materials, 
as  well  as  everything  else  under  the  sun, 
masons,  carpenters,  painters,  limeburners,  sand- 
men, labourers  and  handy  men.  To  create  such 
vast  employment  it  had  been  found  necessary  to 
extend  the  scheme  far  beyond  its  original  con- 
ception and  money  had  been  borrowed  from  Mr. 
Alexander  Waddell  and  Mr.  St.  John  Marlowe, 
twenty-four  good,  solid  men  assembling  in  the 
musty  premises  of  "  the  Bank  "  one  Friday  to 
give  their  security.  The  small  sum  which  Mi- 
chael Dempsey  was  instrumental  in  making  had 

91 


92       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

been  swallowed  up  in  preliminary  expenses  and 
Ambrose  Donohue,  the  architect,  as  he  now 
styled  himself,  had  already  managed  to  arrange 
for  the  expenditure  of  the  second.  A  sense  of 
eager  futility  lay  heavy  upon  Ballycullen. 

It  almost  appeared  as  if  the  passion  which  had 
flowed,  even  out  of  the  Ireland  of  his  time,  into 
the  soul  of  Michael  was  now  ebbing  away.  There 
seemed  to  be  some  power  creeping  into  the  world 
which  stood  for  the  putting  away  of  all  clean 
things.  Sinn  Fein  had  grown  very  timid,  its 
small  voice  sounding  a  note  of  apology  almost 
for  its  own  existence.  Some  vulgar,  shoving 
thing  was  edging  it  out  of  the  world.  An  ex- 
emplification of  the  ugly  process  was  happening 
here  just  now  in  Ballycullen.  They  could  talk  of 
nothing  but  the  hall  and  the  dances  they  were 
going  to  have.  The  healthy  pleasures  of  the 
hurling  or  football  field  with  a  dance,  in  the  com- 
pany of  bright-eyed  girls  at  the  end  of  an  epic 
day,  in  some  barn  or  by  some  cross-roads  had 
held  a  quality  at  once  beautiful  and  Irish  but  all 
this  efficient  organisation  of  something  which 
should  spring  spontaneously  was  vulgar  and  Brit- 
ish. Well  and  truly  had  Sinn  Fein  laid  stress 
on  this  from  the  beginning,  the  absolute  in- 
decency it  was  for  Irish  people  to  ape  the  ways 
of  their  conquerors.  There  was  a  great  deal  of 
this  kind  of  thing  in  Ballycullen.  The  young 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  DANCE        93 

men  who  did  read  looked  out  at  life  through  the 
eyes  of  "  The  News  of  the  World  "  and  "  The 
Umpire,"  the  girls  coloured  all  their  romantic  no- 
tions by  attempting  to  apply  sentiments  from 
Charles  Garvice  and  to  imitate  photographs  in 
"The  Daily  Sketch."  .  .  .  Michael  often 
thought  that,  were  the  English  gifted  with  much 
sense  of  humour,  they  must  laugh  hugely  at  what 
might  here  be  seen.  Although  he  did  not  know 
the  story  by  Balzac  of  the  Ass  in  the  Lion's  skin 
it  was  of  some  such  laughable  pretentiousness  he 
thought  whenever  he  would  allow  his  mind  to 
dwell  sufficiently  long  upon  the  shoneenism  of 
Ballycullen.  .  .  .  Yet,  in  immediate,  tremen- 
dous offensiveness,  was  the  thought  that,  because 
of  the  wave  of  prosperity  now  creeping  over  it, 
his  country,  in  the  direction  of  many  social  es- 
sentials, was  rapidly  assuming  the  mentality  of 
England  while  there  was  still  something,  it  might 
be  in  the  very  air  and  colour  of  the  green  fields, 
which  still  clung  them  pathetically  to  the  old 
picture.  .  .  .  Great  God,  why  could  not  Ire- 
land possess  that  oneness,  that  rich  content  of  cor- 
respondence with  its  own  soul  which  is  what  one 
should  mean  by  nationhood!  This  much  was 
certain,  that  in  no  country  in  the  world  had  the 
word  nationality  been  so  often  used  and  yet  al- 
ways so  misapplied.  It  might  be  that  the  eman- 
cipation of  the  Irish  farmers  had  caused  them 


94       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

to  discover  a  mode  of  expression  for  their  free- 
dom. They  came  drunk  to  dances  in  their  motor 
cars  and  did  their  best,  in  spite  of  a  poor  educa- 
tion and  an  amount  of  peasant  crudeness,  to  ape 
the  manners  of  landlord's  sons,  a  class  they  had 
replaced.  The  strong  farmer  had  become  the 
Irish  country  gentleman,  just  as  it  should  be,  an 
Irish  man  living  in  his  own  country  and  possess- 
ing the  means  to  keep  up  a  certain  "  style."  The 
middle  or  smaller  farmers  were  driven  in  turn 
by  their  women  to  ape  these  and  the  smallest 
farmer  often  produced  a  daughter  who,  as  a  sym- 
bol of  this  spirit,  would  sit  by  the  fire  all  day 
dressed  in  the  tip  of  the  fashion  and  reading  silly 
romances.  The  shopkeepers  in  small  towns  like 
Ballycullen  were  identical  in  the  same  exhibitions 
of  emancipation.  And  then  there  was  the  mob, 
those  to  whom  all  these  made  a  kind  of  vague 
headline  to  be  copied  indiscriminately.  Drunken- 
ness, vulgarity  and  pride  were  everywhere  to  be 
seen.  To  all  seeming  the  ancient,  ornamented 
pattern  of  Ireland  might  be  the  same  and  run- 
ing  in  the  same  moulds,  but  to  him  the  metal  was 
heavily  alloyed  at  its  very  source.  Would  they  be 
worthy  even  of  Home  Rule?  He  often  thought  not 
in  moments  of  extreme  despondence,  although  that 
catch-cry  of  the  politicians  almost  appeared  a 
blasphemy  to  him  as  a  Sinn  Fein. 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  DANCE        95 

He  was  one  of  those  who  came  to  the  first 
dance  in  the  grandiosely  converted  courthouse  ex- 
actly after  the  fashion  in  which  he  had  fancied 
he  must  come  here.  He  had  merely  bought  a 
double  ticket  and  so  had  come  with  Mirandolina. 
Their  friendship  or  affection  had  not  progressed 
to  any  surprising  extent  in  the  months  which  had 
intervened.  They  had  met  of  evenings  pretty 
frequently  but  always,  as  it  were,  under  the 
shadow  of  their  disappointment.  It  seemed  to 
abridge  continually  any  long  flights  into  the 
richly  coloured  country  of  Romance.  Always  it 
seemed  that  this  lovely  and  fine  thought  of  Mi- 
randolina was  made  so  small  and  timid  and  that 
he  must  be  no  different  in  her  eyes  from  any  poor 
brow-beaten  shop-boy  whom  she  might  meet  in 
a  hundred  other  Irish  towns  if  she  went  away 
from  Ballycullen  in  the  morning. 

Now  that  the  days  had  lengthened  out  their 
meetings  would  be  less  and  less  frequent.  In  fact, 
because  of  their  enforced  timidity,  such  oppor- 
tunities of  intercourse  must  have  vanished  alto- 
gether by  the  time  the  summer  had  come,  when 
their  moments  together  should  be  confined  mainly 
to  Sundays.  Leaving  the  village  at  different  times 
and  by  different  roads  they  would  meet  in  some 
distant  place  after  going  circuitous  journeys  still 
half  afraid  as  they  walked,  rather  more  it  would 


96       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

seem  with  their  bicycles,  than  with  one  another 
in  the  sunlight.  .  .  . 

However,  on  the  occasion  of  a  dance,  such  as 
the  present,  no  one  minded.  Flirtation  or  what- 
ever it  might  be  or  be  called  was  on  such  a  night 
a  thing  to  be  paraded  rather  than  hidden.  It 
was  always  a  night  of  the  pride  of  all  things  in 
Ballycullen.  It  was  a  night  of  artificiality  and 
show  working  only  towards  the  success  of  those 
thus  inclined. 

It  was  a  great  night  for  Ambrose  Donohue,  for 
he  had  used  a  good  deal  of  the  money  made  out 
of  the  scheme  of  recreative  improvement  towards 
further  correcting  the  lout  in  his  appearance.  He 
had  even  gone  so  far  as  to  hire  a  dress  suit  from 
Dublin.  In  this  the  moment  of  his  triumph  he 
appeared  particularly  anxious  to  extinguish 
Michael.  The  attentions  he  so  forcibly  lavished 
on  Mirandolina  became  rapidly  such  as  no  girl 
could  possibly  resist  or  refuse.  Thus  very  early 
in  the  night  was  Michael  left  without  the  com- 
panionship which  alone  could  make  this  place 
bearable  and  also  without  his  only  excuse  for 
being  here.  ...  It  was  a  blow  too  that  he  had 
not  expected.  The  last  vestige  of  glamour  faded 
from  the  scene  around  him.  .  .  .  He  saw,  with 
almost  sickening  clarity,  the  gaudy,  untidy,  un- 
tasty  attempts  of  poor-looking  girls  to  adorn 
themselves,  their  amateurish  attempts  to  paint 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  DANCE        97 

their  faces  in  imitation  of  women  of  the  streets 
and  women  of  the  stage.  .  .  .  He  saw  even 
Mirandolina  flash  him  the  look  of  the  light 
woman  from  her  crudely  pencilled  eyes.  .  .  . 
She  had  thrown  herself  upon  the  winning  side, 
for  it  is  in  the  nature  of  a  woman,  as  he  had 
already  felt,  to  applaud  the  victor.  In  sudden 
darkness  he  felt  the  almost  decadent  weakness 
and  colour  of  scenes  which  made  him  think  of 
scraps  of  ancient  history  he  had  read  wherein  was 
pictured  the  lustful  look  upon  all  things  which 
comes  before  an  Empire's  fall.  .  .  .  His  coun- 
trymen in  flattery  of  England  were  already  wal- 
lowing. ...  It  was  strange  to  think  of  the 
inevitable  fall  of  the  British  Empire  being  ful- 
filled prophetically  in  them.  .  .  . 

These  well-fed  agricultural  gallants  were  now 
crowding,  mostly  drunk,  around  the  bar.  They 
were  spinning  yarns  out  of  their  adventures  which 
had  happened  mostly  in  Dublin  and,  as  they 
talked,  Dublin  suddenly  appeared  a  very  wicked 
place  indeed.  Michael,  with  an  intensified,  dra- 
matic sense  of  his  characterisation  saw  Ambrose 
Donohue  come  amongst  them.  Companionship 
was  here  easily  effected,  for  these  were  his  equals. 
He  too  was  a  story-teller  of  this  kind  and  what 
was  better  still  he  could  flatter  their  vanity  by 
making  funny,  plagiaristic  attempts  to  tell  them, 
as  his  own,  stories  which  were  of  their  own  au- 


98       THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

thorship,  brand  or  copyright.  They  patronised 
him  with  amusement  to  themselves  as  he  abased 
himself  abysmally  in  their  sight.  He  hung 
around  them  in  accommodation  while  they  made 
him  the  wisp  of  straw,  as  it  were,  upon  which 
they  wiped  their  dancing  slippers  as  they  made 
entrance  to  different  aspects  of  their  grandeur. . . . 

A  few  moments  before  Michael  had  been  al- 
most vexed  that  his  lofty  and  remote  aceticism 
in  Ballycullen  had  always  placed  the  comfort, 
such  as  it  was,  of  drink  beyond  him.  In  such  a 
time  as  this  it  would  be  a  comfort  surely.  .  .  . 
Immediately  he  felt  a  kind  of  gladness  of  emanci- 
pation as  he  was  compelled  to  hear.  .  .  .  The 
talk  continuously,  endlessly,  appallingly  was  of 
women  and  of  women.  .  .  .  Ambrose  Donohue 
was  contributing  some  very  realistic  remarks  to 
the  symposium.  It  was  in  anger  that  Michael 
thought  how  this  fellow  had  been  so  recently 
dancing  with  Mirandolina.  .  .  . 

He  went  out  again  amongst  the  dance  where 
the  blessed  light  of  day  was  beginning  to  break 
in  and  flood  over  the  artificiality  of  the  dance. 
The  whole  gay  scene  was  coming  to  appear  so 
poor  and  mean.  .  .  .  Mirandolina  looked  frail 
and  faded  as  she  sat  by  the  wall.  Another  dance 
had  begun  to  move  round  and  round  and  she  ap- 
peared momentarily  very  deserted  sitting  there. 
.  .  .  She  gave  Michael  a  long,  quiet  look,  but  he 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  DANCE        99 

passed  her  unmindful  and  did  not  mingle  with 
the  dancers  again.  He  got  his  coat  and  went  out 
on  his  way  homeward.  After  all  it  seemed  a 
slight  incident  to  have  marked  this  night  for  him 
with  such  dark  emphasis.  But  in  a  place  like 
this  where  life  moved  in  hidden  ways,  in  fact 
almost  as  an  undercurrent  always,  there  were 
many  who  saw  in  his  going  the  melodramatic 
touch  which  distinguishes  all  the  real  happenings 
of  life  and  so  it  reminded  them  to  the  verge  of 
weeping  sentiment  of  sad  moments  in  the  stories 
which  were  slipped  over  for  their  consumption 
from  England.  ...  A  night  such  as  this  always 
marked  the  ending  of  old  romances  and  the  be- 
ginning of  new  romances  which  would  be  new  and 
bright  for  only  a  little  while.  .  .  * 

She  was  after  being  foolish  enough  "  to  get  her 
name  up  with  him  "  and  now  they  were  very  glad 
indeed  to  see  her  give  him  the  go  by.  It  was  a 
further  and  no  doubt  for  him  more  painful  aspect 
of  his  defeat.  It  was  a  pity  he  had  ever  given 
his  ambition  towards  the  upliftment  of  Ballycul- 
len  the  dramatic  turn,  for  in  their  narrow  eyes, 
as  in  those  of  the  English  Law,  the  stage  player 
was  resolutely  fixed  as  a  rogue  and  a  vagabond. 
Also  the  stage  was  to  them  very  definitely  synony- 
mous with  certain  ragged  little  bands  which  came 
here  heralded  by  huge,  lying  handbills.  These 
always  set  up  their  show  in  patched  canvas  booths 


100      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

and  performed  such  thrilling  dramas  as  Sweeney 
Todd,  the  Demon  Barber,  East  Lynne,  All  for 
Love,  Only  a  Mother,  etc.,  etc.  "Admission  6d: 
Front  seats  I/ —  Children  half  price."  At  night 
the  hissing  duck  lights  lent  some  aspect  of  wonder 
to  the  show  but  during  the  day,  when  the  men 
drank  in  the  dirtier  pubs  and  sucked  at  "  Wood- 
bines "  stuck  almost  continuously  to  their  lower 
lips,  the  women  looked  for  milk  and  bread  while 
the  choice  people  of  Ballycullen  spoke  their  pity 
of  them  just  as  if  they  were  mere  tramps.  The 
animosity  already  stirred  in  such  minds  had 
caused  them  to  picture  Michael  as  doing  some- 
thing like  this  with  Mirandolina  Conway  who 
was  a  very  nice  girl,  or  at  least  they  were  ready 
to  say  so  in  their  moments  of  deepest  spite  against 
him.  .  .  .  Indeed  and  indeed  for  many  and  many 
a  reason  were  they  glad  of  his  discomfiture  as  he 
went  out  of  the  dance  hall.  .  .  . 

The  bloody,  cursed  cheek  of  him  anyway,  the 
damnable  ideas  and  the  talk  of  him,  the  way  he 
used  to  be  talking  about  the  strike  for  instance. 
It  was  the  great  Dublin  strike  of  1913-14  to 
which  they  referred,  a  thing  fought  very  remotely 
from  Ballycullen  for  many  reasons.  Michael 
had  been  heard  to  drop  words  of  sympathy  with 
the  strikers,  although  "  Sinn  Fein  "  had  not  been 
with  them  and  the  employer  controlled  press  was 
very  solicitous  to  censor  anything  in  the  nature 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  DANCE      101 

of  a  decent  opinion.  ...  It  was  very  meet  in- 
deed that  Ballycullen  should  be  remembering  this 
against  Michael  in  a  moment  of  gaiety.  .  .  . 

"  But,  the  Lord  save  us,  anyone  that'd  have  a 
good  word  to  say  of  either  Connolly  or  Larkin 
was  nothing  short  of  a  scandal!  ' 

This  was  the  word  which  sprang  from  the 
thought  of  Ballycullen,  with  such  vehement  en- 
thusiasm did  it  place  itself  on  the  side  of  the 
angels  in  opposing  the  workers  of  Dublin  and 
their  leaders.  ...  A  fitting  punishment  had  now 
been  visited  upon  this  fellow  for  his  championship 
of  such  blackguards. 

As  he  turned  the  corner  of  the  old  courthouse 
Michael  saw  a  man  standing  up  against  one  of 
the  high  windows  with  his  nose  flattened  white 
against  the  glass.  .  .  . 

"  Musha,  it's  nor  the  same  way  we  all  go  mad," 
said  the  man  smiling  down  queerly  at  Michael  as 
he  went  by.  It  was  Kevin  Shanaghan  eagerly 
watching  and  waiting  to  drain  the  bottles  and  the 
half  empty  glasses  when  the  revel  was  ended.  .  . 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE   URGE   OF   ULSTER 

THE  winter  yawned  balmily  out  of  its  sleep 
into  the  wild,  bright  days  of  spring  and 
the  coming  of  Home  Rule  was  heralded 
by  more  and  more  intensely  excited  groups  that 
remained  longer  and  longer  talking  on  the  street 
of  Ballycullen  in  the  evenings.  Strangely  enough, 
in  preparation  for  this  long-sought  freedom,  there 
was  a  more  determined  return  to  drunkenness  and 
all  the  ancient  rages  which  drew  their  inspiration 
from  the  bottle.  Rumours  came  through  the 
papers  of  the  arming  of  the  Orangemen  in  the 
Black  North  and  of  course,  being  countrymen  of 
their  own,  the  people  of  Ballycullen  hated  this 
unholy  tribe  more  by  a  great  sight  than  they  hated 
England.  This  arming  was  a  most  damnable 
business,  they  all  said. 

There  was  a  prophecy  prevalent  hereabouts 
that  the  Orangemen  would  break  loose  some  day 
and  never  stop  until  they  came  to  the  Bridge  of 
Athlone  where  an  old  woman  with  a  stockingful 
of  stones  would  stop  them.  Meanwhile  they 

would  have  massacred  all  the  "  Irish  "  in  their 

102 


THE  URGE  OF  ULSTER  103 

track.  And  by  a  curious  misfortune  Ballycullen 
lay  directly  in  the  curved  course  they  would  take 
between  Belfast  and  the  Bridge  of  Athlone.  And 
they  were  all  "  Irish  "  here.  .  .  .  Then  came  the 
Larne  gun-running,  and  for  the  first  time  in  its 
long  history  Ballycullen  became  genuinely 
alarmed.  It  was  something  shocking  to  think 
of  it,  Ned  Carson  and  Campbell  the  lawyer  and 
the  Marquis  of  Londonderry  and  Captain  Craig 
and  Galloper  Fred  Smith  coming  down  from  Bel- 
fast with  a  lot  of  raging  devils  to  kill  them  all —  . 
Their  enthusiasm  for  Home  Rule,  which  somehow 
seemed  to  stand  for  little  beyond  protection  of 
their  own  skins,  now  became  absolutely  tremen- 
dous. In  their  sudden  fear  and  excitement  they 
did  not  know  exactly  what  to  do  with  themselves. 
Often  now,  his  meetings  with  Mirandolina  hav- 
ing been  ended  by  the  dance,  as  Michael  strolled 
disconsolately  down  the  street  after  closing  time 
he  would  hear  them  talking  excitedly  in  little 
groups : 

"  D'ye  know  what  it  is  now?     Any  man  that 
wouldn't  make  a  stand  against  them  bloody  ruf- 
fians from  Belfast,  d'ye  know  what  I'm  going  to 
tell  you  now?     He'd  be  no  man." 
"  Well,  here's  me  for  it  to  the  last!  " 
"Aye  and  me.     I  was  never  a  great  man  to  talk 
about  Ireland  but  I'd  never  stand  to  see  that  day 
lived  over  me !  " 


104     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

Of  course  some  remark  directly  about  him 
would  be  dropped  just  as  soon  as  he  had  gone  by 
and  immediately  they  would  fall  to  wondering 
why  Michael  of  all  people  "  and  he  full  up  of 
Ireland  "  should  be  taking  the  whole  thing  so 
coolly.  Why,  man  alive,  he  had  a  kind  of  a 
smirk  of  a  grin  on  him  enjoying  it,  begad !  And 
certainly  he  did  see  something  to  laugh  at  — 
sadly  —  in  these  days  in  Ballycullen. 

He  saw  something  fine  about  all  this  fierce  in- 
tention of  the  North  which  made  it  truly  compar- 
able with  the  Ulster  of  Henry  Joy  McCracken 
and  William  Orr.  It  stood  most  truly  for  the 
olden  beautiful  spirit  of  Irish  Nationality. 
Ulster's  cold  exterior  had  hidden  this  for  so  long 
like  the  spark  embedded  somewhere  in  the  flint, 
but  all  the  softness  and  slobberiness,  all  the  heart- 
wearing  on  the  sleeve  of  the  rest  of  Ireland  con- 
cealed no  fire.  It  had  all  been  frittered  away  in 
blather  and  in  Ballycullen  were  they  blathering 
still.  The  mind  of  Michael  was  with  the  men  of 
Ulster,  but  experience  had  already  taught  him 
not  to  be  too  free  in  letting  known  his  mind,  and 
open  expressions  of  his  opinions  now  would  be 
far  more  disastrous  than  his  foolishness  in  speak- 
ing well  of  Connolly  and  Larkin.  In  conse- 
quence he  knew  the  joy  of  pondering  his  thoughts 
in  unsullied  loneliness,  for  there  comes  a  great 
kindliness  from  the  unspoken  thought.  Al- 


THE  URGE  OF  ULSTER  105 

though  he  never  met  Mirandolina  now  he  had  not 
heard  that  she  was  yet  "  friends  "  with  another. 
There  was  no  bitterness  in  his  mind  regarding 
her,  but  somehow  he  saw  Ambrose  Donohue  more 
clearly  than  ever  before.  Continually  this  prom- 
ising young  man  came  smiling  diplomatically  to 
discover  his  opinion  on  the  present  crisis,  but  all, 
his  attempts  so  far  had  been  unsuccessful.  By 
intimate  contact  with  the  facts  of  life  which  he 
sought  to  change,  the  Sinn  Fein  spirit  in  Michael 
was  rapidly  becoming  more  practical.  It  was 
the  traditional  importance  of  talk  which  may  have 
been  responsible  for  the  blunders  he  had  already 
made.  Ballycullen  had  not  succeeded  in  mak- 
ing him  in  the  least  like  itself,  yet  this  caution  he 
had  acquired  was  essentially  of  Ballycullen.  But 
he  knew  that  should  he  be  so  foolish  as  to  discuss 
this  Ulster  business  with  Ambrose  Donohue  that 
eager  young  man  would  immediately  reproduce 
it  as  well-reasoned  out  matter  of  his  own  towards 
his  own  benefit  for  the  enlightenment  of  those 
now  wildly  anxious  to  know  what  to  think.  But 
he  was  not  to  be  drawn  by  even  the  most  intense 
exhibitions  of  confidence.  .  .  « 

It  gave  him  some  pride  in  himself  in  these  days 
to  feel  around  him  all  the  seething  anxiety  which 
he  might  have  ended  at  his  pleasure,  yet  was  he 
almost  angry  to  feel  that,  could  he  speak  to  them 
out  of  his  love  for  Ireland,  they  might  see  a  clear, 


106      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

gleaming  way.  .  .  .  Then  suddenly  he  grew  more 
angry  to  see  that  the  Party,  which  to  his  mind 
had  left  the  mark  of  the  beast  upon  Ireland,  was 
endeavouring  to  produce  upon  large  National 
lines  something  which  seemed  but  a  faint  copy  of 
the  fine  spirit  of  the  North  which  Carson,  al- 
though only  another  political  trickster,  had 
evoked  in  its  real  sincerity.  They  were  a  suffi- 
ciently subtle  crowd,  he  knew,  and  probably  their 
real  object  was  to  destroy  the  very  thing  that  they 
now  seemed  solicitous  to  endorse.  The  result 
of  all  this  eloquent  striving  might  become  ap- 
parent in  Ballycullen  at  any  moment.  This  must 
be  very  interesting  indeed,  Ballycullen  summoned 
collectively  to  effort  in  obedience  to  the  mandate 
which  would  go  forth.  He  thanked  God  for  his 
share  of  humour,  more  particularly  because  in 
the  days  of  its  fear  the  quality  of  humour  was 
notably  absent  from  Ballycullen.  If  it  really 
came  to  fighting  the  Orangemen  in  Ballycullen  he 
wondered  how  he  should  be  fixed.  There  would 
be  the  form  of  conscription  created  by  a  strong 
public  opinion  and  this  he  knew  would  be  very 
powerful.  Marcus  Flynn  himself  would  probably 
order  him  to  service  for  Ireland  as  part  of  the  duty 
he  owed  him  as  his  shop-boy  and  a  servant  of 
Ballycullen.  .  .  . 

Then  what  he  had  most  feared  came  naturally, 
almost  as  an  inevitable  result  of  the  political 


THE  URGE  OF  ULSTER  107 

whirl  of  the  time.  It  was  the  announcement  in  a 
flaring  poster  that  a  meeting  to  form  a  corps  of 
the  Irish  National  Volunteers  would  be  held  in 
Ballycullen  upon  the  date  therein  mentioned. 
The  very  thought  of  it  was  almost  maddening. 
It  seemed  such  a  sin  against  the  progress  of  the 
world,  not  to  speak  of  common  decency  or  think 
of  the  olden,  beautiful  traditions  of  Ireland.  It 
was  treacherously  anachronistic,  more  nearly 
blasphemous.  The  platform,  perhaps  in  an  en- 
deavour to  perpetrate  a  touch  of  irony,  would  be 
erected  beneath  the  shadow  of  the  new  court- 
house. It  would  be  built  of  rough  planks  laid 
upon  empty  half  barrels  out  of  the  pubs.  The 
other  fixtures  of  the  platform  were  stored  upon 
the  premises  of  Thomas  Cooney,  like  the  fittings 
of  a  stage  laid  by  from  performance  to  perform- 
ance. The  only  thing  ever  requiring  replace- 
ment was  the  top  rail  of  the  platform,  which  had 
been  frequently  broken  by  the  fists  of  very  power- 
ful local  speakers  in  driving  home  some  impor- 
tant point.  Now  were  all  these  queerly  symbolic 
things  to  be  dragged  out  into  use  once  more,  like 
the  things  of  a  child's  playbox.  A  new  aspect  of 
Irish  Nationality  had  been  suddenly  discovered, 
and  so  the  annual  pageant  of  the  platform  must 
be  held  beneath  the  laughing  skies.  .  .  .  Parnell 
had  spoken  from  this  same  platform  and  Michael 
Davitt,  and  William  O'Brien,  and  John  Dillon 


JOS     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

and  a  great  many  minor  men  of  more  thunderous 
vociferousness,  a  long  line  of  unnecessary  heralds 
of  the  day  of  deliverance.  .  .  . 

Now,  of  a  sudden,  was  there  much  prate  in 
every  place  of  the  Convention  of  Dungannon  and 
the  Volunteers  who  had  won  the  Parliament  of 
1 782.  There  was  much  searching  of  the  memory 
for  almost  forgotten  facts  of  history  and  on  the 
street  of  Ballycullen  of  an  evening  might  be  heard 
character  sketches  of  such  strongly  similar  and 
strongly  contrasted  patriots  as  Henry  Grattan  and 
Meagher  of  the  Sword,  Wolfe  Tone  and  Dan 
O'Connell.  There  seemed  to  be  a  general  up- 
springing  of  martial  ardour  and  Ballycullen  was 
making  its  soul  in  preparation. 

Kevin  Shanaghan  often  came  into  the  shop 
where  Michael  worked  during  these  days.  He 
had  a  hunted,  almost  fearful  look,  and  there 
seemed  an  immense  eagerness  upon  him  to  be 
drunk.  He  expressed  his  sense  of  disgust  rather 
well  and  it  was  remarkable  that  he  should  be 
driven  to  express  himself  so  forcibly  at  this  be- 
yond any  other  time: 

"  The  Lord  knows  but  it  gives  me  a  kind  of 
sickness  in  the  very  bowels  when  I  have  to  listen 
to  now  in  this  God  damned  place !  It  was  hard 
enough  to  have  to  listen  to  them  always,  but  it's 
something  hellish  to  hear  them  talking  of  dying 
for  Ireland!  " 


THE  URGE  OF  ULSTER          109. 

Michael  was  not  able  to  bestow  upon  this  sad 
man  even  his  accustomed  amount  of  compassion. 
He,  too,  was  excited  more  and  more  as  day  suc- 
ceeded day,  angry,  puzzled,  and  doubtful  in  a 
way  he  had  not  hitherto  known.  Although  the 
pure  gold  of  its  essence  still  shone  through  Sinn 
Fein  yet  did  its  outward,  combative  life  seem  to  be 
struggling  within  the  shadow  of  a  mighty  impulse 
which  was  gradually  shaping  all  things  to  its 
need. 

Not  one  seemed  able  to  think  of  anything  but 
the  Volunteers  — "  Volunteers  to  have  and  to 
hold  our  newly-won  liberties;"  "Soldiers  of 
Erin;"  "Gallant  Defenders  of  our  Faith  and 
Fatherland."  Such  well-worn  phrases  and  old 
sayings  abounded  in  the  great  speeches  now  hold- 
ing the  country  spell-bound. 

Often  now  in  the  vacant  moments  of  the  shop 
his  mind  almost  pained  him  in  his  attempts  to 
find  answers  for  wild  questions.  .  .  .  Could  it 
really  be  that  the  Dawn  was  come,  having  chosen 
thus  to  manifest  itself  in  places  like  Ballycul- 
len?  .  .  .  The  young  farmers  and  graziers 
who  had  been  accustomed  to  come  into  the  shop 
with  their  sticks  held  horizontally  under  their 
arms,  a  great  doggedness  in  every  movement  of 
their  minds  and  bodies,  now  walked  about  excit- 
edly whenever  they  came  in  with  the  very  same 


110     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

sticks  held  against  their  shoulders  in  imitation  of 
rifles. 

The  Sergeant  came  often  to  declare  that  he'd 
think  nothing,  so  he  wouldn't,  of  throwing  down 
his  arms  and  of  taking  up  others  in  defence  of 
old  Ireland  against  Carson  and  his  mob.  Am- 
brose Donohue  was  already  beginning  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  military  situation  by  sawing 
wooden  guns  out  of  suitable  timber. 

There  was  a  further  and  more  intense  aspect 
becoming  increasingly  manifest.  There  was  more 
fierce  drinking  in  an  endeavour  to  catch  the  spirit, 
it  would  seem,  which  men  would  soon  be  needing 
to  meet  and  conquer  their  enemies  in  battle.  .  .  . 
And  there  was  never  an  angry  word  against  Eng- 
land. England  was  anxious  to  do  the  right  thing 
at  last  only  for  this  murdering  crew  in  Belfast 
that  was  thinking  of  rising  out,  in  fact,  telling  the 
world  loudly  that  they  were  going  to  rise  out  to 
keep  the  rest  of  Ireland  from  its  due.  ...  In  the 
evenings  motors  would  be  stopping  by  the  door 
and,  evidently  mistaking  the  shop  for  a  pub, 
young  louts  of  prosperous  farmers  would  be  stag- 
gering in  looking  for  drink  and  cursing  Carson. 
Carson  was  now  cursed  in  Ballycullen  with  a 
vehemence  comparative  only  to  the  cursing  of  his 
Holiness  the  Pope  in  Portadown. 

Michael  was  often  almost  driven  madly  to  give 
out  his  opinion  by  some  of  the  things  he  was  com- 


THE  URGE  OF  ULSTER          111 

.  pelled  to  see  and  hear.  .  .  .  But  for  the  love  of 
God  or  Ireland  he  remained  silent  and  besides 
Sinn  Fein  seemed  to  have  grown  so  silent  now. . . . 
"I'd  like  to  get  a  red-hot  poker  — "  a  patriot 
of  Ballycullen  would  often  begin  only  to  have  his 
expression  of  longing  immediately  drowned  by  a 
wild,  drunken  chorus  of  ferocious  desire  with 
regard  to  Carson.  .  . 


CHAPTER  X 

A  GREAT  MEETING 

THE  bright  June  day  was  heavy  with  the 
hum  of  martial  music,  very  badly  played 
indeed,  yet  noisy  and  stirring.  Down  all 
the  four  roads  into  Ballycullen  the  people  came 
like  armies  in  the  sun.  The  gold  upon  the  green 
banners,  although  tarnished  through  age  and 
rough  usage,  now  struggled  into  its  share  of 
brightness  and  crude  glory.  As  the  music  came 
into  Ballycullen  it  approached  nearer  the  quality 
of  harmony.  The  street  was  plentifully  bedecked 
with  laurel  and  other  green  stuff.  There  were 
triumphant  arches  across  the  street,  all  covered 
with  crooked  letters  crowding  out  at  the  ends, 
which  had  been  painted  by  Ambrose  Donohue. 
"  God  Save  Ireland!  "  "  Cead  Mile  Failte!  " 
"  Ireland,  Boys,  Hurrah!  "  "  Down  with  Car- 
son!" Triumphant  arches,  but  in  celebration  of 
what  triumph  ?  The  head  of  Michael  was  deeply 
puzzled  as  he  tried  to  find  an  answer. 

There  were  moments  when  he  thought  that  the 

connection  of  his  country  with  England  was  a 

112 


A  GREAT  MEETING  113 

vague,  meaningless,  almost  imaginary  thing,  as 
vague  and  meaningless  perhaps  as  the  symbols 
set  up  so  often  to  celebrate  an  imaginary  separa- 
tion. A  very  momentous  thing  had  just  hap- 
pened. A  few  British  Officers  at  the  Curragh 
had  mutinied  in  religious  obedience,  it  would 
seem,  to  Ulster's  threat  of  rebellion.  This  extraor- 
dinary event  had  inflamed  the  mind  of  Ireland 
in  a  way  that  was  curiously  contradictory  to  tradi- 
tional sentiment.  .  .  .  Was  it  not  really  in 
keeping  with  the  old,  heroic  rebel  traditions  and 
rather  something  to  be  proud  of  that,  at  long  last, 
even  a  section  of  Irishmen  in  the  British  Army 
had  refused  point  blank  to  advance  savagely  upon 
another  section  of  Irishmen?  Yet  for  all  the  way 
in  which  it  really  should  be  regarded  this  thing 
had  made  Ireland  very  mad  indeed.  What  was 
happening  here  was  but  one  shout  of  the  great 
collective  shout  which  was  being  performed  this 
day  all  over  Ireland.  This  tremendous  answer 
stood  everywhere  for  a  tumultuous  coming  and 
going  as  if  of  an  army  with  banners.  .  .  . 

"  I  declare  to  Christ,  but  this  is  the  greatest 
day  ever  seen  in  Ballycullen!  "  said  an  ancient 
man  in  the  hearing  of  Michael,  just  as  the  speak- 
ers seemed  to  float  onto  the  platform  upon  the 
highest  wave  of  enthusiasm.  The  chair  was 
taken,  as  a  matter  of  course,  by  Thomas  Cooney 
who  was  the  ex-officio  chairman  of  all  meetings 


114     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

held  in  Ballycullen.  People  often  said  that 
where  in  the  world  could  such  a  chairman  be 
found  as  Thomas  Cooney  ?  Gilbert  McCormack 
moved  nervously  beside  him  as  if  anxious  for  and 
feeling  entitled  to  some  distinction  as  his  father's 
son,  yet  meek  and  deferential  in  the  presence  of 
the  power  and  popularity  of  Thomas  Cooney. 
Ambrose  Donohue  was  prominent,  also,  in  a  green 
"  God  Save  Ireland  "  hat  and  a  big  green  tie. 
He  was  anxious  for  the  success  of  the  meeting,  as, 
he  had  hammered  the  platform  together,  and  had 
not  yet  been  paid  for  the  work.  But,  of  course, 
there  would  be  subscriptions  towards  a  fund  at 
the  end.  It  was  quite  impossible  to  think  of  a 
public  meeting  without  this  natural  conclusion. 

Michael  caught  a  glimpse  of  Mirandolina,  also, 
on  the  outskirts  of  the  crowd  with  a  little  cluster 
of  girls.  She  was  wearing  a  pretty  summer  dress 
and  a  white  hat  with  a  broad  green  ribbon  around 
it.  Her  eyes  seemed  strained  to  catch  some 
meaning  from  the  scene  as  soon  her  ears  must  be 
strained  to  catch  some  meaning  from  the  flood  of 
words.  If  only  he  and  she  were  talking  now,  he 
might  be  able  to  explain  or  at  least  to  give  her  his 
opinion  upon  the  whole  performance. 

Connor  Carberry  was  on  the  platform,  too,  al- 
though not  prominent  as  a  speaker,  but  his  look 
was  strained  into  a  mixture  of  adoration  and  ad- 
miration upon  the  flag.  .  .  .  His  eyes  were 


A  GREAT  MEETING  115 

running  water  and  his  mouth  was  dribbling  like 
the  mouth  of  a  young  child.  .  .  .  His  mind 
would  seem  to  be  folding  and  unfolding  itself  in 
the  madness  of  his  dream  as  the  flag  fell  and  flut- 
tered and  floated  smoothly  again  upon  the  soft 
summer  breeze.  .  .  . 

Distantly,  upon  the  further  outskirts  of  the 
crowd,  and  appearing  almost  as  an  essential  fix- 
ture of  Whelehan's  public-house,  stood  Kevin 
Shanaghan,  with  the  same  decaying,  almost  ob- 
scene face,  wearing  the  same  smile  as  if  he  were, 
laughing  at  all  this  with  a  suppressed,  continuous 
chuckle  in  the  very  middle  of  his  mind.  It  might 
be  that  all  this  invasion  of  Ballycullen  "  played 
into  his  barrow,"  as  he  was  fond  of  saying  with 
sarcastic  use  of  the  slang  of  Ballycullen.  The 
Sergeant  always  kept  a  vigilant  eye  on  him  on 
Sundays  to  prevent  him  effecting  a  breach  of  the 
Licensing  Act,  but,  to-day  there  would  be  a  laxity 
of  vigilance  in  this  direction.  There  would  be 
opportunities  and  flows  of  drink  and  he  would  at 
least  win  the  means  of  forgetting  the  scene  which 
Ballycullen,  out  of  his  abysmal  possibilities,  was 
now  forcing  him  to  witness.  .  .  . 

The  Sergeant  himself  was  sweating  under  his 
spiked  helmet,  that  monstrous  full-dress  headgear 
of  the  Royal  Irish  Constabulary.  His  agony  was 
neither  so  complete  nor  exquisite  as  usual,  for  he 
had  a  certain  sympathy  with  the  object  of  this 


116     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

patriotic  National  meeting.  His  powerful  allegi- 
ance to  his  sovereign  Lord  the  King  had  suddenly 
become  watered  down  and  beneath  the  deceptive 
hide  of  his  dark  green  uniform  an  Irish  heart  was 
beating.  He  was  always  against  these  cursed 
Orangemen,  anyway.  His  goings  to  Belfast  for 
special  duty  on  "  The  Twelfth  "  had  always  ap- 
peared as  departures  for  "  The  Front  "  away  from 
his  wife  and  family,  never  knowing  what  trip 
might  be  his  last  with  a  belt  of  a  bottle  from  a 
dirty  savage  of  an  Orangeman  in  Sandy  Row.  . . . 

But  already  Thomas  Cooney  had  got  on  a  good 
way  with  his  speech.  He  had  got  so  far  as  to 
affirm  the  ancient  fact  that  he  was  standing  there 
like  all  the  good  and  true  Irishmen  around  him  in 
sacred  defence  of  the  ancient,  indefeasible  rights 
of  the  Irish  people. 

"  We  won't  be  tramped  on  any  longer,  so  we 
won't."  (Cheers.)  Now  that  we  were  just  in  the 
last  stages  of  the  age-long  fight.  (Cheers).  When 
the  ship  was  at  the  harbour's  mouth  as  you  might 
say,  in  the  words  of  the  greatest  Irishman,  or  as  I 
might  say  the  greatest  patriot,  of  all  the  time,  our 
own  true  and  gallant  leader.  (Loud  and  prolonged 
cheering;  shouts  of  "  Up  Redmond!  "  "  To  Hell 
with  Carson!  ")  A  clear  clarion  call  has  been 
sounded  to  the  young  men  of  Ireland,  which,  of 
course,  includes  the  young  men  of  Ballycullen. 
And  it  is  to  see,  I  say  it  is  to  see  that  we  hold  fast 


A  GREAT  MEETING  117 

to  the  prize  at  last  given  us  by  England.  Given 
us,  moryah,  aye  when  it  was  absolutely  beaten 
out  of  them  by  the  great  statesmanship  of  our  re- 
nowned leader  and  the  squeeze  he  gave  them  in 
the  hollow  of  his  hand.  (Tremendous  cheering 
and  shouts  of  "More  power  there,  Thomas!  ") 
And  let  it  go  forth  from  this  mighty  assemblage 
of  all  creeds  and  classes  which  is  to  be  compared 
only  with  the  mighty  gathering  of  our  forefathers 
on  the  renowned  Hill  of  Tara  in  the  days  of  yore. 
(Cheers.)  And  at  this  crisis,  as  I  might  say  in 
our  beloved  country,  Ireland's  fate,  the  men  of 
Ballycullen  will  be  found,  as  they  have  always 
been  found,  in  their  accustomed  place  leading  the 
van.  I  have  little  more  to  say  in  conclusion, 
fellow  countrymen,  only  "  God  Save  Ireland !" 
(Loud  and  vociferous  applause.)  The  continu- 
ous applause  seemed  to  echo  and  re-echo  for  such 
a  long  time  that  it  had  the  effect  of  also  announc- 
ing the  fact  that  Marcus  Flynn  had  come  to  the 
front  of  the  platform  and  was  speaking,  at  least 
he  was  gesticulating  eloquently  in  pantomime. 
The  shouting  died  suddenly  and  in  the  wide  still- 
ness of  the  pause,  by  an  unlucky  accident,  Marcus 
should  be  just  letting  the  words,  "  I'm  not  much 
of  a  speaker!  "  out  of  his  mouth.  There  was  a 
loud  laugh,  which  seemed  to  break  blessedly  upon 
the  ears  of  Michael,  because  of  the  sudden  comedy 
it  gave  the  scene  and  upon  the  ears  of  Kevin 


118      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

Shanaghan,  too,  he  thought,  because  of  the  sym- 
pathy there  was  between  them.  .  .  .  That 
vague  man  still  stood  afar  off.  .  .  . 

The  loud  laugh,  which  went  on  exploding  suc- 
cessively for  a  while,  appeared  to  nettle  Marcus  a 
little,  but  he  could  not  be  thus  suddenly  silenced, 
for  to-day  his  mind  was  working  nimbly  because 
he  had  taken  a  large  dose  of  whiskey  to  fortify 
himself  for  the  ordeal.  He  was  spitefully  con- 
scious of  the  fact  that  he  could  not  manufacture  a 
speech  with  the  ease  and  precision  of  Thomas 
Cooney,  business  rival  and  long  established 
enemy  in  many  ways  as  he  was  and  to-day  it  was 
urgently  incumbent  upon  him  for  commercial  and 
social  reasons  to  create  a  great  impression  upon 
public  opinion.  Already  he  had  thought  out  his 
plan  over  a  whiskey  bottle  in  the  parlour : 

"  I'm  not  much  of  an  orator,  fellow-country- 
men," he  continued,  "  but  I  second  every  single 
word  that  my  eloquent  friend  (there  was  a  sup- 
pressed laugh  at  this),  Mr.  Cooney  has  said,  and 
there!  " 

He  turned  around  suddenly  and  grasping  the 
hand  of  Thomas  Cooney  shook  it  with  such 
warmth  as  nearly  threw  the  late  speaker  out 
of  his  standing.  It  was  a  tremendous  anti- 
climax, for  the  eloquent  gombeen-man  had  built 
upon  his  well  rehearsed  speech  to  completely 
knock  the  devil  out  of  Marcus  Flynn,  who  had 


A  GREAT  MEETING  119 

not  a  word  to  throw  to  a  dog  in  private,  not  to 
mention  in  public,  on  a  great  occasion  like  the 
present.  He  was  flabbergasted  but  what  could 
he  do  but  return  the  magnanimous  hand-shake 
there  in  the  full  gaze  of  the  now  fiercely  enthusi- 
astic throng.  .  .  .  On  the  part  of  Marcus  it 
had  been  a  ruse  most  subtly  instinctive  of  the 
political  showman,  but  good  whiskey  was  often  a 
great  help  to  a  man  in  a  tricky  situation.  .  .  . 
The  crowd  was  now  absolutely  mad.  To  see 
two  ancient  enemies  shaking  hands  like  that! 
Why,  it  was  a  tremendous  act,  almost  as  great  in 
their  eyes  as  if,  at  the  present  juncture,  in  agree- 
ment upon  some  brilliant  plan  to  settle  the  Irish 
question  at  last  and  end  for  ever  all  the  different 
forms  of  English  political  trickery,  Sir  Edward 
Carson  had  suddenly  shaken  the  hand  of  John 
Redmond  before  the  gaze  of  a  wondering  world. 
.  .  .  Thus  in  the  bewildering  moment  of  its 
happening  did  it  appear  as  the  greatest  thing  that 
had  ever  been  done  in  Ballycullen  and  what  way 
could  anyone  feel  after  the  like  of  that  only  all 
for  Ireland?  .  .  .  United  we  stand,  divided  we 
fall!  .  .  .  That's  what  would  settle  Carson! 
The  drummers  hit  the  drums  with  their  fists  and 
a  few  fifes  were  blown  as  if  to  further  emphasise 
the  fact  and  the  glory  of  the  incident,  making  it 
one  that  should  not  soon  fade  from  the  memory 
of  Ballycullen.  .  .  . 


120     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

Gilbert  McCormack  seemed  to  think  better  of 
it  at  the  last  moment  and  did  not  come  forward 
to  stutter  his  usual  few  words,  but  a  lone  voice 
full  of  forced  enthusiasm  shouted : 

"  Three  cheers  for  the  son  of  Hugh  O'Donnell 
McCormack,  the  man  that  f ollied  Parnell !  ': 

The  few  poor  cheers  which  followed  were 
rather  for  Parnell  and  his  memory  than  for  Gil- 
bert McCormack  and  the  memory  of  his  father. 
But  these  trailed  away  very  timidly,  those  who 
had  given  them  utterance  becoming  suddenly 
ashamed  that  other  people  present  might  think 
they  were  cheering  Gilbert  McCormack  himself. 
Besides,  there  was  a  shrewd  suspicion  in  not  a  few 
minds  that  this  shout  had  been  hired  for  the 
occasion. 

Nor  did  Ambrose  Donohue  venture  a  speech. 
It  was  his  policy  of  the  moment  to  flatter,  by  his 
silence,  those  who  thought  that  they  could  speak. 
He  had  his  eye  on  the  job  of  secretary  or  treas- 
urer of  what  might  result  from  this  meeting.  In 
either  capacity  he  might  be  able  to  manage  an  odd 
little  slice  of  the  fund.  And,  of  course,  there 
would  be  a  fund.  He  knew  well  that  there  would 
be  a  fund. 

A  young  man  just  arrived  by  motor  from  Dub- 
lin now  made  a  dramatic  appearance  at  the  front 
of  the  platform.  To  the  eyes  of  Michael  the 
whole  scene  seemed  to  stagger  loutishly  away 


A  GREAT  MEETING  121 

from  the  sudden  splendour  of  this  young  man's 
words.  .  .  .  He  had  not  caught  his  name  as 
he  was  being  introduced  to  the  meeting.  Some- 
one beside  him  now  asked  someone  else : 

"  Who's  that  fellow,  anyway?  Begad  he  can 
speak,  not  like  the  lot  of  stuttering  idiots  we're 
after  listening  to?  " 

"  Be  hell,  they  say  that's  Shaun  McDermott 
from  Dublin." 

That  name,  linked  with  the  wild,  sweet  words, 
which  were  falling  as  if  to  cleanse  Ballycullen 
like  the  way  a  dusty  place  is  made  bright  again 
by  summer  rain,  brought  Michael  to  greater  at- 
tention. He  knew  this  man  to  be  one  of  the  gal- 
lant little  band  that  had  raised  up  in  him  the 
flame  which  had  been  hidden,  almost  quenched, 
here.  .  .  .  He  remembered,  with  a  sense  of 
atonement  in  the  very  thought,  that,  for  the  mo- 
ment they  had  come  down  from  their  lofty  places 
in  order  to  teach  all  the  futile,  anxious,  puzzled 
men  the  way  to  love  their  country.  Perhaps 
Shaun  McDermott  would  tell  Ballycullen  what  he 
himself  had  been  afraid  to  tell  it.  They  might 
listen  to  a  man  from  Dublin  but  not  to  him.  .  .  . 

A  finer  enthusiasm  seemed  to  have  come  upon 
them  already  and  there  was  no  playing  for  ap- 
plause in  the  speech  of  this  young,  handsome  man, 
who  had  filled  his  gentle  heart  with  the  pure  pas- 
sion of  his  ideal,  only  a  quiet,  continuous  per- 


122     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

suasive  flow  of  great  words  spoken  almost  in 
gladness.  .  .  .  Michael  had  already  forgotten 
that  he  was  still  in  Ballycullen.  He  seemed  to  be 
standing  in  the  very  middle  of  Ireland  and  within 
sound  of  the  strong  chains  clanking  madly  to 
the  moment  of  release,  while  all  around  him  were 
men  flashed  suddenly  into  worthy  comradeship 
with  those  who  had  died  for  Ireland.  .  .  .  This 
surely  appeared  as  the  moment  for  which,  through 
all  the  weary  years  of  Ballycullen,  he  had  been 
preparing  his  heart.  .  .  . 

He  did  not  suddenly  become  aware  that  they 
were  beckoning  to  him  from  the  platform.  .  .  . 
Why,  of  course,  there  was  nothing  wrong  with  the 
platform  now,  so  he  ran  up  amongst  them  joy- 
fully. 

"  We're  just  having  a  little  preliminary  confab 
here  among  ourselves,"  said  Ambrose  Donohue. 
"  You  know,  of  course,  that  there'll  have  to  be  a 
little  fund.  It's  a  bit  late  in  the  year  for  dances, 
but  you  could  pull  a  big  crowd  with  a  patriotic 
play,  now  that  we're  all  in  the  game  for  Ireland 
as  you  might  say.  We  were  just  thinking  that 
you're  the  very  man  in  the  gap.  '  Robert  Emmet ' 
again,  you  know!  We  might  run  it  for  three  or 
four  nights  on  the  strength  of  the  present  enthu- 
siasm and  make  a  hat-full  of  money ! " 

"The  very  thing!  The  very  thing!  "  stut- 
tered Gilbert  McCormack.  "  We'll  all  have  to 


A  GREAT  MEETING  123 

let  bygones  be  bygones  now.  It's  everyman's 
cause,  for  it's  the  common  danger,  so  it  is,  and  we 
must  all  be  united!  " 

Thomas  Cooney  leaned  across  the  table  from 
his  proud  place  in  the  chair  and,  catching  Mi- 
chael's hand  in  his  which  was  almost  limp  with 
the  excitement  of  the  moment,  whispered  tensely: 

"  Good  man,  Michael!  Good  gossoon!  I  know 
you  won't  fail  us !  ' 

Marcus  Flynn  said  thickly,  drunkenly,  yet 
proudly  and  possessively: 

"  Fail  the  devil!  Isn't  he  my  man?  Amn't  I 
paying  him  and  keeping  the  roof  over  his 
mother's  and  sister's  heads.  And  if  he's  not  a 
hell  of  a  lot  in  the  shop,  he's  a  damned  fine 
actor!" 

But  Michael  in  this  moment  needed  neither 
urging  nor  coaxing  nor  threatening.  The  man 
who  had  thrilled  him  to  the  very  soul  was  still 
speaking  and  the  words  of  the  others  came  to  him 
as  if  through  a  golden,  auricular  haze.  He 
merely  whispered  "Certainly!  "  He  did  not 
hear  the  immense  sigh  of  relief  which  the  others 
heaved  nor  did  he  realise  at  all  the  commitment 
of  himself  that  he  had  made.  .  .  .  He  saw 
only  Connor  Carberry  looking  up  at  the  flag  with 
the  tears  streaming  down  his  face.  .  .  .  Kevin 
Shanaghan  had  vanished,  even  as  a  dim  speck 
from  his  consciousness,  having  doubtless  de- 


124     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

scended  upon  Whelehan's  public  house  at  the 
highest  moment  of  excitement.  .  .  .  The  green 
band  of  her  hat  flashing  suddenly  bright  across 
his  vision  and  his  mind  did  not  cause  him  to 
remember  that  he  had  put  himself  in  the  way  of 
meeting  and  speaking  with  Mirandolina  again. 

The  meeting  was  at  an  end,  having  become  so 
beautiful  an  atonement  for  itself  in  its  concluding 
stages.  He  was  honoured  to  find  himself  shak- 
ing hands  with  the  man  who  had  just  spoken  so 
finely.  The  bands  were  drumming  up  again  for 
a  triumphant  march  past  and  the  great  meeting 
of  Ballycullen  in  June,  1914,  was  at  an  end. 


CHAPTER  XI 

ASPECTS  OF  IRISH  SOLDIERING 

ELTS  and  bandoliers.     We'll  have  to  get 
belts  and  bandoliers!  " 
"And  caps!  " 

"Aye,  and  caps,"  the  other  would  affirm,  al- 
though he  evidently  gave  first  place  to  belts  and 
bandoliers  in  the  military  scheme. 

A  man  thus  fully  equipped  with  belt,  bandolier 
and  wooden  gun  had  something  like  the  halo  of 
a  crusader  shining  around  him.  The  conception 
of  knighthood  and  fair  women  had  somehow 
struggled  into  Ballycullen.  Those  who  carried 
wooden  guns  in  public  boasted  in  private  that 
they  had  plenty  of  "  the  stuff  "  hidden  in  safe 
places.  "  The  stuff  "  included  everything  in  the 
shape  of  guns  and  ammunition,  from  blunder- 
busses to  sixteen-chambered  revolvers  of  the  most 
approved  and  deadly  pattern.  Groups  of  con- 
spirators gathered  nightly  in  the  pubs  to  discuss 
these  things  in  hushed,  fierce  tones.  ...  It 
was  damnable  to  think  of  this  happening  after  so 
many  years,  their  being  called  upon  to  die  for 

125 


126     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

Ireland,  but  a  branch  of  the  Irish  National  Vol- 
unteers had  been  established  in  Ballycullen  and 
it  must  be  done.  ...  On  drill  nights  the 
countryside  would  be  emptied  of  its  youth  and  all 
would  be  congregated  in  one  of  the  darkest  places 
in  the  parish  forming  fours  under  the  direction 
of  an  ex-soldier  who  had  "  gone  through  it  "  with 
Lord  Roberts  in  Afghanistan.  The  life  had  been 
almost  hammered  out  of  him  by  discipline,  but 
now  he  was  having  some  sort  of  revenge  for  the 
wasted  years  of  his  slavery  through  the  insolent 
blasphemy  with  which  he  shouted  his  commands 
at  even  the  sons  of  strong  farmers.  He  was 
"  mad  drunk  "  every  night,  for  he  had  to  be  paid 
always  before  he  could  be  induced  to  make  a 
start  out  to  the  drilling  place  from  either  Cooney's 
or  Whelehan's.  He  behaved  continually  as  he 
had  seen  fierce,  drunken  Colonels  behave. 

The  convention  of  meeting  in  a  lonely  place 
would  seem  to  have  been  revived  to  most  subtly 
induce  the  ancient  spirit.  Yet  they  appeared 
heavily  chained  at  every  turn,  even  by  their  own 
melodramatic  patriotism,  which  was  part  of  the 
effort  before  the  world  to  prove  the  sincerity  of 
their  ambitions,  their  struggles  and  their  hopes  to 
escape  from  bondage.  Hence  all  the  secrecy  of 
their  meetings  appeared  unnecessary  when  one 
thought  of  the  loud  openness  with  which  they 
spoke  of  "the  stuff"  in  the  dark  "pubs"  of 


ASPECTS  OF  IRISH  SOLDIERING    127 

Ballycullen.  But  there  was  an  amount  of  what 
one  might  call  "  feeling  "  become  manifest.  Back 
into  many  minds  from  which  all  glad  thoughts  of 
love  and  death  had  been  blotted  by  the  drifting 
years  were  struggling  verses  of  Leo  Casey's 
Fenian  song: 

Down  beside  the  singing  river 

That  dark  mass  of  men  were  seen; 

Far  above  their  shining  weapons 
Hung  their  own  beloved  green. 

By  such  means  were  they  forcing  their  minds 
to  believe  that  they  were  doing  a  noble  and  a 
Fenian  thing,  while  there  was  not  a  gombeenman 
or  a  Cromwellian  descendant  of  the  parish  but 
had  already  subscribed  to  the  fund  to  buy  belts 
and  bandoliers  and  wooden  guns.  .  .  .  The 
list  of  subscriptions  was  headed  on  the  one  hand 
by  Thomas  Cooney  and  Marcus  Flynn,  and  on  the 
other  by  Captain  Beaumont  Fortescue  and  the 
Hon.  Herbert  Fitzherbert.  In  fact,  so  great  was 
the  enthusiasm  for  the  Volunteers  amongst  all  the 
local  gentry  that  Captain  Beaumont  Fortescue, 
who  had  distinguished  himself  in  various  expedi- 
tions against  Zulus  and  other  inferior  peoples, 
had  promised  to  review  the  troops  in  Mulla- 
ghowen  at  an  early  date.  The  remarkable  con- 
descension and  decency  of  this  proceeding  were 
enthused  over  both  at  the  drill  meeting  and  at  the 


128     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

pubs.  But  extraordinary  things  were  happening 
every  day.  New  political  talent  was  being 
forced  to  the  front  in  the  most  amazing  way, 
efficiency  in  military  knowledge  being  the  only 
thing  apparently  necessary.  A  man  who  had 
spent  a  short  time  as  a  carpenter  in  Aldershot  had 
been  elected  Captain  of  the  Ballycullen  Volun- 
teers solely  on  account  of  his  military  experience. 
Another  man  with  his  eye  on  political  advance- 
ment at  any  cost  had  become  "  President  of  the 
Volunteers,"  a  curious  political  position  in  a 
military  organization. 

At  the  meeting  for  the  election  of  officers 
Michael's  name  had  not  been  selected.  There 
were  two  reasons  for  this.  In  the  first  place,  even 
in  spite  of  the  enthusiasm  he  had  shown  for  the 
Volunteers, '  since  the  day  of  the  great  meeting 
there  had  sprung  up  a  certain  amount  of  "  feel- 
ing "  against  him  because  he  had  openly  ex- 
pressed himself  as  being  in  favour  of  Carson. 
At  least  he  had  frequently  said  in  the  shop  that 
Carson  should  be  thanked  for  being  the  means  of 
putting  into  their  hands  a  great  possibility.  It 
had  already  begun  to  be  whispered  around  that 
he  would  probably  be  put  out  of  the  Volunteers 
for  this,  but  he  was  tolerated  for  the  time  being 
because  he  was  "  getting  up  "  the  crowd  again 
to  make  funds  for  the  purchase  of  more  belts  and 
bandoliers  and  wooden  guns.  Besides,  as  he  was 


ASPECTS  OF  IRISH  SOLDIERING    129 

being  so  completely  used  for  this  purpose,  he  could 
not  spare  the  time  necessary  for  "  officering."  The 
fact  helped  to  prolong  his  enthusiasm  which 
might  have  waned  slightly  had  it  been  brought 
into  too  continuous  contact  with  the  Volunteers. 
His  evening  occupation  in  striving  to  bring  to  life 
the  words  and  thoughts  of  Robert  Emmet  still 
kept  alive  in  his  heart  that  part  of  his  dream 
which  the  hope  of  the  Volunteers  had  lit  brightly. 
It  was  not  his  nature  either  to  seek  petty  exalta- 
tion, so  in  any  case  they  might  have  spared  them- 
selves the  trouble  of  snubbing  him.  But  he  would 
show  them  again  what  he  could  do  upon  the  stage. 
He  would  flash  back  the  military  ardour  that 
had  been  raised  up  in  them.  They  would  be 
forced  to  accept  him,  as  it  were,  through  power  of 
his  own  inherent  ability.  Maybe  he  would  speak 
yet  to  great  gatherings  of  men  of  his  own  country 
sufficiently  purified  to  drink  to  its  full  glory  in 
the  spirit  of  Emmet  and  Tone  and  Davis  and 
Mitchel.  .  .  .  Mirandolina  was  very  near  him 
again  and  although  they  were  all  three  rehearsing 
in  the  same  room  of  an  evening  Ambrose  Dono- 
hue  made  no  further  attempts  to  cut  him  out  of 
her  regard.  Ambrose  wanted  the  concert  to  be  a 
huge  success  because  he  was  Secretary  of  the 
Fund.  Mirandolina  went  rather  shyly  about  the 
business  of  rehearsal,  yet  with  a  certain  balance  of 
assurance  well  maintained  between  the  two  men 


£30     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

as  if  nothing  at  all  had  happened  between  the 
three  of  them.  They  had  been  recalled  to  this 
work  at  the  bidding  of  Ireland,  and  so  all  per- 
sonal thoughts  being  driven  away  for  the  moment 
by  the  urgent,  all  embracing  love  of  Ireland,  they 
were  as  happy  as  three  enthusiastic  Socialists  in 
their  dream  of  the  perfectly  ordered  world  in  the 
coming  time. 

The  situation  of  Michael  and  Mirandolina  in 
relation  to  one  another  and  to  Ireland  and  Bally- 
cullen  and  the  stage  and  Romance  had  been  taken 
up  by  both  just  at  the  point  where  they  had 
thought  well  to  move  away  from  it  for  a  little 
while.  Its  old  rich  hue  was  upon  the  enthusiasm 
of  Michael,  and  at  no  behest  of  common  sense 
would  or  could  he  have  kept  from  doing  this  thing 
now.  Mirandolina  had  returned  to  her  place  in 
his  dream  just  as  all  other  things  seemed  to  fall 
naturally  as  pieces  of  circumstance  into  their 
places  in  the  mosaic  of  his  life.  Of  course  he 
did  not  take  any  walks  with  her  down  the  old  ivy- 
hung  pathway  now,  for  all  had  more  anxiety 
presently  than  would  permit  them  to  find  pleasure 
in  the  like  of  this.  Besides,  there  would  be  no 
nights  now  at  midsummer,  no  fragrant  darkness  to 
curtain  them  from  prying  eyes,  and  in  addition 
there  were  men  always  hurrying  along  the  road  on 
Volunteer  business  at  every  blessed  hour  of  the 
evening.  But,  after  the  rehearsals  in  the  hall,  the 


ASPECTS  OF  IRISH  SOLDIERING    131 

talk  would  ever  turn  upon  Ireland,  Michael  freely 
pouring  out  as  a  poet  might  his  poems  for  love  of 
some  beautiful  woman,  all  the  history  and  tradi- 
tion of  Ireland  which  he  had  learned,  and  Am- 
brose Donohue  getting  him  to  repeat  bits  over  and 
over  again  so  that  he  might  have  them  quite  pat 
to  repeat  towards  his  own  advantage  in  pubs  or 
places  where  Michael  was  not  likely  to  go,  for 
the  intellectual  and  patriotic  benefit  of  newly 
arisen  fops  of  farmers  who  had  not  a  word  of 
Irish  history  in  their  heads  although  a  lot  of 
money  had  been  wasted  on  them  at  expensive  col- 
leges. It  was  very  fashionable  at  the  moment 
to  be  patriotic,  and  this  man,  who  could  adjust 
himself  to  every  whim  of  the  public  taste  in  Bal- 
lycullen  with  the  slippery  elasticity  of  an  eel,  had 
given  up  retailing  doubtful  jokes  from  "  The 
Winning  Post  "  and  "  London  Opinion  "  to  talk 
feelingly  about  semi-obscure  patriots  like  Ter- 
ence Bellow  McManus  and  Peter  O'Neill  Crow- 
ley. 

There  were  times  now  when  Michael  almost 
appeared  a  veritable  madman,  so  remote  from 
reality  would  he  be,  not  seeming  to  be  living  in 
Ballycullen  or  any  place  near  it  at  all.  .  .  . 
Mirandolina  liked  to  hear  him  talking,  for  it 
lifted  her  and  him  beyond  this  mean  place,  but 
she  being  only  a  woman,  and  so  constantly  nearer 
the  cruel  reality  of  things,  never  seemed  to  forget 


132      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

that  this  man  who  was  fondly  mirrored  in  her 
heart  was  only  a  poor,  half -cowed  spirit  after  all, 
doomed  to  suffer  here  in  Ballycullen.  And  so  it 
was  that  often  as  he  would  be  setting  about  some 
of  the  grandest  flights  of  his  dream-lit  imagina- 
tion, she  would  look  at  him  in  a  curious,  quizzical 
way,  as  if  she  truly  pitied  him  for  his  foolishness, 
a  great,  big  silly  baby,  as  he  seemed  to  her,  who 
had  not  yet  learned  to  look  out  upon  the  world 
through  the  eyes  of  the  life  he  knew.  She  often 
felt  as  if  she  would  like  to  give  him  a  really  good 
shaking  into  common  sense.  Of  course,  it  was 
the  sudden  twist  towards  patriotism  pure  and 
simple  of  Ballycullen  that  had  put  her  also  in 
this  play,  but  it  was  Michael  who  seemed  to  be 
primarily  responsible,  for  he  would  be  always 
talking  like  a  fool  about  Ireland. 

In  the  drapery  department  of  Thomas  Cooney's 
establishment  she  did  not  come  greatly  into  con- 
tact with  the  all  absorbing  activity  of  the  moment. 
Excepting  that  Ambrose  Donohue  sometimes 
came  into  the  shop  to  buy  calico  for  arches  and 
flags,  and  even  elderly  married  women  would 
come  to  ask  her  assistance  in  deploring  the  woeful 
foolishness  that  had  suddenly  taken  possession  of 
their  men.  Not  a  word  of  scornful  criticism  was 
ever  passed  upon  the  dramatic  class,  for  did  it 
not  flourish  under  the  very  respectable  wing  of 
Thomas  Cooney?  Even  on  Sundays  Michael  was 


ASPECTS  OF  IRISH  SOLDIERING    133 

.kept  very  busy  around  the  club  looking  after 
scenery  and  other  things.  It  was  impossible  for 
him  at  present  to  indulge  his  fancy  in  the  spectacle 
of  a  field  day  of  the  Ballycullen  Volunteers. 

On  the  Sunday  before  the  Concert,  as  he  stood 
upon  the  steps  talking  to  a  few  others,  the  ap- 
proaching music  of  the  small  band  told  him  that 
the  Volunteers  were  at  last  and  for  the  first  time 
concentrating  upon  Ballycullen.  To  him  it  was 
a  glad  fact,  a  magical,  coloured  sound  as  if  out  of 
some  of  the  brightest  pages  of  Ireland's  history 
that  were  being  lived  over  again.  To  him  it  was 
this  surely,  although  just  now,  even  in  this  intense 
moment,  he  became  conscious  of  the  old  sad  smile 
upon  the  face  of  Kevin  Shanaghan  even  though 
it  was  Sunday  and  his  rags  seemed  dirtier  than 
ever  and  the  soles  of  his  boots  were  bound  to  his 
feet  by  bits  of  twine.  .  .  .  Michael  won- 
dered what  in  the  world  the  smile  could  be  for. 
So  far  he  had  not  been  given  the  opportunity  of 
discovering  what  the  opinion  of  Kevin  was  in  re- 
gard to  the  Volunteers,  but  it  did  not  seem  likely 
that  the  silent,  enigmatic  man  would  venture  an 
opinion  although  he  might  smile.  .  ,  .  The 
Volunteers  were  coming  nearer,  and  as  the  music 
suddenly  seemed  to  fill  with  wonder  the  lovely 
day  all  the  thoughts  that  Michael  had  ever  had 
about  Ireland  came  thronging  gladly  back  into 
his  mind. 


134     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

He  thought  that  all  the  valiant  heroes  of  the 
Gael  were  commingled  with  the  Volunteers  as 
they  swept  past,  Owen  Roe  O'Neill  and  Sarsfield, 
Wolfe  Tone,  Michael  Dwyer,  John  Mitchel.  .  .  . 
Again  had  his  dream  blinded  him,  and  he  did  not 
see  the  reality  of  Ballycullen  in  the  shining  mul- 
titude that  went  marching  by.  There  was  only 
one  face  that  touched  him,  and  this  was  the  face 
of  Connor  Carberry,  who  carried  the  flag.  The 
long,  lean  gnarled  hands,  that  had  been  worn  in 
jail  and  in  Australia,  were  firmly  clasped  upon 
the  staff  above  his  head  and  his  eyes,  lifted  up  to 
look  upon  the  flag,  had  something  heavenward 
also  in  their  gaze.  In  the  impassioned  moment 
he  appeared  almost  like  a  holy  man  of  God.  As 
the  procession  approached  and  passed,  Michael 
saw  him  most  clearly  as  a  figure  of  his  dream. 
He  did  not  see  the  motley  crowd  in  all  its  queer 
equipment,  some  only  with  caps ;  others  with  Boer, 
or  what  were  still  known  as  "  God  save  Ireland  " 
hats  of  dark  green,  with  a  celluloid  photo  button 
of  John  Redmond  attaching  the  leaf  to  the  crown; 
some  with  belts  only,  some  with  bandoliers  only, 
others  with  both  and  a  wooden  gun  as  well.  There 
were  some  who  preserved  a  stage  of  Irish  militar- 
ism in  the  blackthorns  which  they  carried,  and  a 
few  courageous  souls  of  Land  League  traditions 
carried  muzzle  loading  shot-guns.  Immensely 
brave,  indeed,  these  felt  themselves  to  be,  seeing 


ASPECTS  OF  IRISH  SOLDIERING    135 

that  they  had  to  pass  the  barracks,  and,  for  all  his 
talk  of  being  a  patriot  now,  the  sergeant  was  a 
hidden  scoundrel.  No,  not  these.  Connor  Car- 
berry  was  not  walking  by  the  side  of  them.  .  .  . 

In  a  continuous,  single  file,  and  moving  as  an 
accompanying  column,  were  the  officers  and  offi- 
cials of  the  Volunteers.  .  .  .  Very  proudly 
came  the  President,  the  Colonel,  the  Treasurer, 
the  Captain,  the  Secretary,  the  Quartermaster  ser- 
geant, numerous  lieutenants,  sergeants,  corpo- 
rals, etc.  The  number  of  officers,  commissioned 
and  non-commissioned,  almost  exceeded  the  num- 
ber of  men.  Experts  in  public  life,  who  always 
managed  somehow  to  edge  into  the  uppermost 
politics  of  the  moment,  were  very  prominent.  .  .  . 
Michael  did  not  suddenly  realise  as  part  of  his 
perception  that  they  had  been  halted  just  outside 
Thomas  Cooney's  public  house  for  "  refresh- 
ments," a  term  vaguely  indicative  of  the  fact 
that  they  were  going  in  to  drink  pints  at  their 
own  expense  and  merely  as  a  considerable  in- 
crease to  his  custom  for  Thomas  Cooney.  The 
broad  smile  which  flittered  into  the  conscious- 
ness of  Michael  from  a  flash,  as  it  were,  across  the 
face  of  Kevin  Shanaghan  was  as  the  accompani- 
ment of  words  which  rang  unspoken  on  his  ear: 

"  Well,  thanks  be  to  God  that  there's  always 
something  that  gives  a  fellow  the  chance  of  a 
drink  even  on  Sunday.  Isn't  it  a  great  move 


136     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

entirely  to  have  the  publicans  at  the  head  of 
the  Volunteers?  Now,  out  on  a  route  march,  for 
instance,  sure  the  lads  can  be  halted  turn  about 
outside  of  all  the  true  patriotic  pubs  in  the 
country.  Whenever,  also,  there  is  a  field  day,  so 
to  speak,  in  Ballycullen,  for  the  lads  in  Bally- 
scallan  it  is  only  natural  to  think  that  the  visiting 
Volunteers  '11  give  their  custom  for  their  porter 
only  to  such  as  are  tried  and  true  friends  of  The 
Cause,  and  vice  versa  when  the  boys  from  Bally- 
cullen go  over  to  visit  Ballyscallan." 

And  this  surely  was  the  graphic  impression 
which  was  flaming  up  in  the  still  unbroken  mind 
of  Kevin  Shanaghan  while  Michael  Dempsey  was 
about  to  rehearse  his  players  in  the  trial  scene  of 
Robert  Emmet  for  its  second  production  in  Bally- 
cullen. Thomas  Cooney  was  filling  out  the  porter 
for  his  numerous  new  customers.  And  who  could 
say  that  the  people  were  not  coming  to  the  front 
at  last,  for  to-day  never  a  peeler  was  barking,  so 
to  speak,  as  Thomas  said,  in  Ballycullen. 


CHAPTER  XII 

MICHAEL'S  DREAM 

THE  days  and  nights  now  whirled  with  what 
seemed  but  one  meaning  towards  the 
night  of  the  concert.  Several  tickets  had 
been  sold  for  every  available  seat  and  the  hall  was 
packed  to  suffocation  on  this  summer  night. 
What  with  the  heat  of  the  night  and  of  the  densely 
packed  house  there  was  a  certain  weariness  upon 
Michael  so  that  he  felt  that  for  him  at  least  the 
greater  part  of  the  performance  must  be  in  panto- 
mime above  the  sound  of  a  drunken  conversation 
and  lewd  jokes  and  scintillant  sparkles  of  saliva, 
which  would  intermittently  introduce  the  quality 
of  light  into  the  thick  air.  .  .  .  Somebody 
had  already  said  that  it  was  an  unnatural  thing 
to  have  a  concert  in  Ballycullen  in  the  summer. 
It  was  something  worse.  It  was  almost  ob- 
scene. .  .  .  But  some  kind  of  show  would 
have  to  be  made  by  the  performers  of  the  eve- 
ning. The  players,  male  and  female,  were  al- 
ready perspiring  in  the  dressing-rooms  before 
they  went  out  upon  the  stage  at  all.  .  .  . 

137 


138     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

Michael  did  not  feel  the  old  pride  in  his  Robert 
Emmet  costume  and  he  thought  as  he  looked  upon 
her  that  Mirandolina  appeared  sickly  in  the  mix- 
ture of  daylight  and  candle-light.  Outside,  con- 
tinuously, could  be  heard  the  wild  sounds  of 
Volunteers  arriving  from  all  parts  of  the  country. 
The  street  was  already  thronged  with  men  un- 
able to  gain  admission.  They  were  turning  back 
and  gaining  admission  to  the  pubs  instead.  All 
the  pubs  were  crowded  and  around  the  hall  was 
no  sign  of  Thomas  Cooney,  or  Whelehan,  or  Nu- 
gent, or  Phillips,  or  Brannagan.  This  was  a 
remarkable  night  of  their  lives,  and  they  were 
all  doing  well. 

Michael  went  out  before  the  other  players  and 
took  a  look  at  the  audience  through  a  hole  in  the 
drop  curtain.  All  the  faces  seemed  commingled 
queerly  into  one  great,  leering  sweating  face. 
Here  and  there  were  individual  touches  which 
distinguished  its  color  and  quality.  A  huge  hulk 
of  a  Volunteer  in  his  belt  and  bandolier  and  cap, 
his  moustache  waxed  military  fashion,  sat  by  the 
side  of  his  sweetheart,  a  servant  girl,  and  from 
staring  fixedly  upon  the  stage  would  turn  in  odd 
moments  to  gaze  upon  her  foolishly  in  strong, 
agricultural  rapture.  .  .  .  Later,  she  would 
be  leaning  upon  his  shoulder  as  he  told  her  what 
he  would  do,  so  powerful  was  the  spirit  which 
had  been  raised  up  in  him  presently.  And  so  in 


MICHAEL'S  DREAM  139 

its  immediate  effects  this  old  passion  play  of  Ire- 
land at  this  production  was  no  different  in  its 
results  from  what  it  had  been  always.  Yet  was 
there  something  different  in  the  constitution  of 
the  audience.  Here,  suffering  for  their  country 
for  the  first  time  in  their  lives,  were  fellows  with 
weak,  effeminate  faces  and  "  swanky  "  clothes, 
shop-boys  from  Castleconner  or  Mullaghowen, 
and  exclusive  Gaels  who  aspired  in  imitation  of 
St.  John  Marlowe,  the  ladies'  man  who  drove  with 
Mr.  Alexander  Waddell  up  through  Ballycullen 
every  Friday.  All  Colonels  or  Captains  or  Ma- 
jors of  local  corps  of  Volunteers,  they  felt  some- 
how as  if  they  were  expected  to  put  in  an  appear- 
ance. .  .  . 

Soon,  however,  just  as  soon  as  the  damned  thing 
started,  they  would  have  managed  to  escape  into 
the  air  and  would  be  handing  one  another  half- 
pints  of  whiskey  outside  the  door,  or  else  trying  to 
"  pick-up  "  girls  of  Ballycullen  as  they  rushed 
almost  fainting  out  of  the  hall  a  little  later 
on.  ...  .  Perhaps  because  the  remainder  of 
the  hall  appeared  so  densely  crowded,  Michael 
noticed  particularly  six  empty  chairs  in  the  front 
row  covered  with  green  cloth  and  looking  very 
like  reserved  seats  for  notable  people.  .  .  . 
Somebody  just  beside  him,  and  looking  also 
through  the  curtain,  remarked  that  these  seats 
were  reserved  for  Captain  Beaumont  Fortescue 


140     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

and  the  Hon.  Herbert  Fitzherbert  and  their 
ladies.  ...  Of  course  these  had  bought 
tickets  but  this  was  not  sufficient  to  make  certain 
the  fact  that  they  would  come  here.  Yet  this 
ostentatious  emptiness  had  been  arranged  in  their 
honor  just  as  their  horses  might  be  led  after  the 
gun  carriage  were  they  being  given  a  military 
funeral  by  the  great  Empire  they  had  served  so 
well.  Some  of  their  labourers  were  here  to-night 
and  they  would  be  glad  to  hear  from  them  to- 
morrow of  this  mark  of  respect  to  the  "  nobs." 
It  might  mean  a  further  subscription  to  the  Fund. 

There  did  not  seem  to  be  any  use  in  waiting 
further  for  more  people  to  crowd  into  this  suffo- 
cating place.  But  there  was  an  urgent  reason  for 
delay.  Ambrose  Donohue  had  not  yet  arrived 
from  Dublin  on  the  recently  purchased  second- 
hand motor  bicycle  which  his  secretaryship  of  the 
Volunteers  had  brought  him.  .  .  . 

But  just  now,  of  a  sudden,  the  noise  of  his 
two-stroke  engine  could  be  heard,  the  hum  ris- 
ing gradually  higher,  like  the  approach  of  a  great 
bee,  until  Ambrose  at  last  jumped  off  just  outside 
the  door  and  came  into  the  dressing-room.  He 
was  hot  and  dusty  and  excited,  and  partly  drunk. 

"  Oh  listen,  d'ye  know  what's  after  happen- 
ing in  Dublin  to-day?" 

They  crowded  around  him  to  hear  the  news. 
He  began  to  tell  them  what  might  appear  through 


MICHAEL'S  DREAM  141 

his  excitement,  half  truth,  half  fantastic  rumour, 
as  a  description,  of  what  might  result  as  an  epoch- 
making  event.  How  there  had  been  a  great  land- 
ing of  guns  at  Howth  to-day  as  the  Nationalist 
counterblast  to  what  had  happened  in  Larne. 
That  the  military  had  been  called  out  against 
them  and  how  the  Volunteers  had  fought  to  the 
last  man.  There  had  been  a  great  battle  all  along 
the  sea  road  from  Howth  and  a  regular  massacre 
at  Bachelor's  Walk.  But,  thanks  be  to  God  was 
the  prayer  of  everyone  in  Dublin,  that  the  guns 
were  safe. 

"  Isn't  it  bloody  awful?"  said  even  Ambrose, 
stung  to  this  expression  of  his  patriotism,  "  that 
Carson  wasn't  interfered  with,  but  now  d'ye  see 
that  the  dirty  Scottish  Borderers  didn't  forget  to 
shoot  when  it  was  us  that  was  in  it.  By  God,  it's 
not  fair!" 

It  took  a  little  time  for  Michael  to  realize  the 
news,  and  when  at  last  he  did,  it  was  just  before 
he  went  out  upon  the  stage  to  play  the  part  of 
Robert  Emmet.  There  came  a  passionate 
twitching  into  the  muscles  of  his  face  and 
a  new  splendour  into  his  words.  .  .  .  There 
seemed  to  be  a  great  gladness  upon  him  and  a 
feeling  that  this  was  the  sublime  moment  of  his 
life.  There  was  a  hoarse  cheer  from  the  dense 
audience,  which  seemed  to  re-echo  upon  the  street 
and  far  down  into  the  very  bowels  of  the  pubs. 


142      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

It  was  like  a  sound  of  purpose  against  the  flash- 
ing magic  of  this  moment  in  Ireland.  The  wild 
cheers  which  echoed  and  re-echoed  through  Bally- 
cullen  as  the  play  went  on  told  the  audience  that 
the  story  of  Robert  Emmet  and  what  had  hap- 
pened to  him  was  nearer  them  than  ever  before 
by  reason  of  what  had  just  happened  in  Dublin. 
The  British,  the  English,  the  Sassenach,  the  Gov- 
ernment, or  by  whatever  other  name  you  wished 
to  describe  them,  were  still  the  same  rotten 
scoundrels  out  of  hell  in  spite  of  all  their  talk 
about  Home  Rule,  and  Asquith  and  the  great 
British  democracy.  Groups  were  passing  out  of 
the  hall  every  few  minutes  so  that  others  might 
come  in  to  see  the  play  and  so  have  the  oppor- 
tunity of  cheering  to  their  heart's  content.  On 
the  whole  it  was  the  most  awful  orgy  of  patriot- 
ism ever  seen  in  Ballycullen.  The  appeal  of  the 
passion  play  had  been  something  to  conjure  with 
always,  but  now  they  were  translated  almost  to 
the  extent  of  being  transferred  back  bodily  into 
all  the  most  glamorous  periods  of  Irish  history 
simultaneously,  successively,  inclusively.  .  .  . 
In  the  oblivious  moment  of  their  madness  they 
cheered  Michael  Dempsey  as  if  he  were  no  longer 
the  shop-boy  in  Marcus  Flynn's  at  all,  but  in- 
stead some  new  and  inspired  saviour  of  Ireland 
suddenly  come  amongst  them  for  the  first  time. 
Yet  the  madness  of  Ballycullen  was  as  nothing 


MICHAEL'S  DREAM  143 

beside  the  madness  that  was  upon  Michael  Demp- 
sey.  He  was  tense,  passionate,  stricken  white  al- 
most through  his  grease-paint.  He  saw,  half 
comically,  across  the  red  smear  of  the  night,  even 
his  master,  Marcus  Flynn,  applauding  him  as  he 
sat  there  immensely  in  one  of  the  very  front  seats. 
It  was  the  thing  that  summoned  his  mind  to  the 
final  effort  towards  which  it  had  been  struggling. 
When  the  curtain  had  fallen  upon  the  last  act  of 
the  play  he  would  speak  to  them  in  his  own  words, 
from  his  own  heart  and  out  of  the  hatred  of  Eng- 
land that  he  had  fanned  up  around  his  soul  in 
his  lonely  room  in  his  mother's  house.  No  one 
in  the  whole  world  knew  how  much  that  room  of 
dreams  meant  to  him,  but  to-night  he  would  give 
them  a  taste  of  its  splendour.  .  .  . 

The  final  curtain  had  fallen  and  he  had 
stepped  before  the  painted  canvas.  He  saw  only 
a  lumpish,  moving  mass  and  a  sickening 
sea  of  faces,  and  yet  he  was  speaking,  speaking 
with  a  wild  vagueness  out  of  the  dream  that  had 
come  to  him.  He  did  not  see  the  wide,  wide,  sneer, 
nor  all  the  shiny,  dribbling  smirk  of  derision  that 
was  upon  every  face.  .  .  . 

God  knows,  but  wasn't  it  simply  barbarous,  the 
cheek  of  him!  Wasn't  it  bad  enough  to  have  to 
listen  to  him  going  through  his  part  without  hav- 
ing to  set  up  with  this  bloody  dose?  A  Republic ! 
That's  what  he  was  saying.  Did  anyone  ever 


144      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

hear  such  nonsense  ?  God  knows,  but  Home  Rule 
was  bad  enough !  Good  God  Almighty !  did  any- 
one ever  hear  such  lunacy  at  this  stage  of  the 
world's  history?  Wasn't  it  a  wonder,  now,  that 
Marcus  Flynn,  a  shrewd  man,  would  keep  an 
idiot  like  that  in  the  house  ? 

He  did  not  hear  the  derisive  whoops  of  "  Good 
man  there,  Mickeen !  "  from  the  mob,  or  a  loud, 
full-blooded  "  Yahoo !"  at  intervals.  .  .  . 

He  became  aware  that  someone  was  pulling 
him  by  the  sleeve,  whispering  him  with  feverish 
anxiety  to  come  off  the  stage.  Then  he  returned 
to  realisation  as  the  curtain  was  lowered  slowly 
before  his  eyes.  He  could  not  hear  the  roaring  in 
the  street  nor  the  wild  demoniac  laugh  of  de- 
rision. .  .  .  Then  in  a  sudden  instant  he 
became  Michael  Dempsey  again.  .  .  .  He  saw 
Mirandolina  Conway  looking  up  tenderly  into 
his  eyes  and  heard  her  saying  in  tones  of  the 
strangest  consideration : 

"  Oh,  Michael,  why  ever  in  the  name  of  good- 
ness did  you  take  that  wretched  whiskey?  It  has 
set  you  mad." 

It  was  a  peculiar  instant  of  earthly  conscious- 
ness when  someone  who  might  be  said  to  be  very 
fond  of  him  was  trying  out  of  her  pity  and  out  of 
her  love,  perhaps,  to  find  an  earthly  excuse  for  his 
sudden  flight  of  madness.  Drunkenness !  It  was 
a  sufficiently  reasonable  supposition  to  believe 


MICHAEL'S  DREAM  145 

that  he  must  be  drunk,  seeing  that  mostly  all  those 
around  him  were  "  blind  to  the  world,"  and  even 
Ambrose  Donohue  had  been  just  barely  sober 
enough  to  ride  the  motor-bike  from  Dublin.  .  .  . 

Mirandolina  had  always  felt  it  was  a  thing 
greatly  to  Michael's  credit  that  here  in  this  de- 
moralising atmosphere  of  Ballycullen  he  had 
held  himself  from  drink. 

And  now  it  was  hard  to  think  that  already  the 
report  was  spreading  broadcast  that  Michael 
Dempsey,  like  all  the  rest  of  the  bucks  connected 
with  the  Dramatic  Class,  had  been  the  worse  of 
drink  at  the  concert,  and  that  he  had  tried  to  make 
a  speech  and  that  he  had  gone  on  with  the  mad- 
dest kind  of  talk  about  a  Republic  and  Rebel- 
lions and  the  Fenians  and  idioting  of  the  sort 
that  nobody  minded  these  times. 

The  story  about  that  this  revival  of  Robert  Em- 
met, having  been  the  means  of  effecting  a  recon- 
ciliation between  them  had  somehow  got  abroad 
and  all  kinds  of  women  and  children  and  others 
would  be  coming  into  the  shop  next  day  to  sympa- 
thise with  her  and  to  suggest  how  very  drunk 
Michael  Dempsey  had  been.  It  would  not  seem 
to  matter  that  mostly  every  crippled  or  able- 
bodied  man  in  Ballycullen  had  been  in  the  same 
state.  The  difference  was,  of  course,  that  Michael 
Dempsey  thought  he  was  a  great  fellow  and  that 
they  did  not  put  up  to  be  anything.  And  she 


146     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

would  be  so  deeply  wounded  by  this,  while  he 
would  not  feel  or  know.  .  ,  . 

Yet,  why  was  she  looking  at  him  so  sadly 
when  he  really  felt  himself  to  be  more  sane  and 
sober  than  he  had  ever  been?  Why  were  all  the 
others  giving  him  such  dark  looks  as  they  slipped 
out  ?  Why  was  she  leaving  him,  too,  with  such  a 
poor  "Good-night"  only  upon  her  lips?  Oh, 
why  was  it  at  all,  or  was  it  merely  because  he  had 
tried  to  tell  them? 

At  last  it  came  to  him  that  he  was  alone  in 
the  dressing-room.  He  hurried  on  his  clothes,  for 
to-night  it  seemed  that  there  was  a  tremendous 
urgency  upon  him  to  be  thinking  and  it  seemed 
that  he  could  think  along  the  line  he  wished  only 
in  the  loneliness  of  his  own  room.  ...  At 
the  door  two  men  were  waiting  to  see  him  or 
speak  to  him  as  he  went  out.  These  were  Connor 
Carberry  and  Kevin  Shanaghan.  The  wild  look 
upon  the  puzzled  face  of  Connor  seemed  to  grow 
more  intense,  and  the  wise,  sad  smile  to  deepen 
upon  the  face  of  Kevin  Shanaghan.  .  .  . 
That  was  all  before  they  separated.  It  happened 
so  quickly  that  it  did  not  seem  like  a  moment 
slung  across  his  path  by  Fate.  ...  It  was 
a  little  strange  to  think  that  in  the  loftiest  moment 
of  his  life  those  who  had  come  to  him  were  a 
drunkard  and  a  madman.  .  .  .  Recollection 
did  not  suddenly  spring  as  a  comfort  to  tell  that 


MICHAEL'S  DREAM  147 

King  Lear  had  gone  out  to  meet  his  end  accom- 
panied by  a  fool.  But  it  would  have  been  quite 
improper  on  the  part  of  one  so  recently  self-de- 
clared an  Irish  Republican,  Lear  having  been  de- 
scribed by  Shakespeare  as  a  British  king. 

There  was  upon  him  when  he  entered  the  little 
room  a  feeling  of  triumph  such  as  he  had  never 
before  known.  This  night  his  dream  had  been 
real,  he  had  spoken  out  of  all  his  lonely  planning 
within  these  four  walls.  He  had  surprised  Bally- 
cullen.  He  supposed  that  they  thought  they 
knew  him,  the  thing  that  stood  up  inside  Marcus 
Flynn's  counter  every  day,  and  that  they  had 
correctly  fixed  his  possibilities  in  their  continu- 
ous sneer.  But  now  he  was  as  one  most  subtly 
different  from  any  estimate  which  might  flow  off 
common  tongues.  He  went  to  a  box,  and  with  a 
certain  air  of  reverence,  which  was  upon  him  this 
evening  in  keeping,  as  it  were,  with  his  sudden 
grandeur,  unlocked  it.  It  was  a  goodly  bundle 
of  manuscript  that  he  took  out  and  placed  upon 
the  table  in  the  circle  of  the  lamplight.  He 
locked  the  door  and  put  the  key  in  his  pocket,  an 
unnecessary  precaution  it  might  be,  for  there  did 
not  seem  much  risk  of  possible  interruptions. 
Yet  he  went  on  almost  to  affect  the  gestures  and 
whispering  secrecy  of  one  conspiring  tremen- 
dously with  himself.  Then  he  opened  the  bundle 
of  manuscript  and  gazed  down  at  the  plans.  .  .  . 


148     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

Here  were  all  the  maps  and  full  particulars  of 
the  rising  which  he  had  spent  long,  sleepless 
nights  in  working  towards  perfection.  .  .  .  This 
was  a  better  plan  than  Robert  Emmet's.  It  was 
something  that  had  come  to  him  here  in  the 
dark  and  lonely  moments  of  his  brooding, 
through  all  the  long  time  he  had  been  engaged 
in  reading  the  little  papers  and  dwelling  upon 
the  history  of  Ireland.  It  was  the  light  that  had 
broken  in  upon  his  mind,  his  inspiration  out  of 
the  far  ways  of  the  ancient  Gaelic  civilisation 
towards  which  his  soul  had  been  eternally  grop- 
ing, for  it  had  appeared  to  him  that  the  agony  of 
Ireland  must  surely  be  lifted  as  by  a  miracle  of 
God.  .  .  .  All  down  the  ages  there  had  been 
manifestations  of  the  Holy  Spirit  through  such 
lowly  people  as  he  was.  And  through  the  mouth 
of  more  than  one  prophet  had  Ireland  been  prom- 
ised her  freedom.  .  .  .  What  if  not  the 
moving  of  some  such  impulse  towards  this  end 
had  caused  him,  Michael  Dempsey,  a  shopboy 
who  had  not  moved  very  far  away  from  Bally- 
cullen,  and  who  had  received  only  a  very  indif- 
ferent education,  and  who  had  fed  his  mind  only 
on  scraps  of  Irish  history  and  mediocre  journal- 
ism, who  had  scarcely  seen  a  member  of  any  mili- 
tary body  in  his  life,  with  the  possible  exception 
of  the  peelers  in  Ballycullen  marching  down  to 
the  court  two  deep  on  the  first  of  every  month,  to 


MICHAEL'S  DREAM  149 

think  of  this  great  thing?  How  had  it  been 
possible  for  him  to  contrive  with  such  rich  com- 
pleteness the  heap  of  plans  upon  the  table  ?  These 
were  not  the  mere  ravings  upon  paper  of  a  dis- 
ordered brain.  On  the  contrary,  they  were  orderly 
and  thorough,  and  quite  convincing.  To  a  very 
encouraging  degree  the  promise  of  success  was 
upon  them.  It  seemed  impossible  to  imagine  that 
there  was  further  foreshadowing  of  a  sudden  dis- 
aster here.  ...  So  very  convincing  were  they, 
indeed,  that  they  would  certainly  fetch  a  good 
price  in  the  hands  of  one  who  would  be  in  direct 
succession  from  Dermot  MacMurrough  down 
through  Leonard  McNally  to  Richard  Pigot.  .  .  . 
His  reading  of  Irish  history  had  given  him  this 
warning,  also,  to  be  careful.  .  .  .  He  must 
wait,  however,  and  bear  with  it  until  the  coming 
of  other  times  and  the  rise  of  other  men  should 
naturally  evoke  his  assistance.  For  a  great 
while  now  it  had  been  his  fancy  to  think  that  all 
the  circumstances  of  Ireland  must  naturally  move 
to  the  moment  from  which  he  should  emerge.  It 
seemed  to  him  to-night  that  the  moment  was 
rapidly  approaching  and  it  was  because  of  what 
had  happened  in  Dublin  to-day  and  its  connection 
with  the  things  of  his  vision  that  he  had 
spoken.  ...  He  hoped  now,  in  an  instant 
of  stark  sanity,  that  he  had  not  gone  too 
far.  .  .  .  No,  it  was  the  very  fullness  of  his 


150     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

heart  that  had  saved  him  from  himself.  The 
very  blindness  and  dumbness  of  passion  that  had 
come  upon  him  towards  the  end  of  his  speech, 
through  the  intensity  of  his  love,  had  helped  him 
to  effect  something  like  caution.  .  .  .  But  maybe 
he  had  said  sufficient  to  give  them  a  glimpse  of 
himself  as  he  might  be  when  Ireland  should 
honour  him  as  the  man  sprung  so  lowly  at  length 
attained  to  power  through  strength  of  a  supreme 
love.  .  .  .  Through  him  it  might  be  that  the 
Queen,  almost  grown  too  sad  and  desolate  to 
win  a  lover,  might  be  fondled  and  kissed  again 
towards  a  rarer  beauty  than  her  Dear  Dark  Head 
had  ever  known. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

1914 

NEXT  morning  Michael  stood  behind  the 
counter  as  usual.    Marcus  Flynn  came 
into  the  shop  looking  rather  seedy,  as  he 
had  disposed  of  a  good  many  half-pints  to  bring 
him  through  the  ordeal  of  the  previous  night.  He 
peered  narrowly  at  Michael. 

"  You  were  in  a  grand  condition  last  night," 
he  said.  "  But  curse  of  hell  on  the  same  Robert 
Emmet,  anyway,  sure  everyone  in  the  whole  place 
was  rotten,  and  I  suppose  I'll  have  to  excuse  you 
for  this  time." 

Having  said  this,  Marcus  went  out  of  the  shop 
and  back  into  the  parlour  to  enjoy  himself.  .  .  . 
So  that  was  the  construction  already  put  upon  it 
by  his  employer,  and  doubtless  all  Ballycullen 
was  already  saying  the  same  thing  —  or  worse. 
It  was  his  immediate  reward  for  speaking  to  them 
from  his  very  heart.  It  was  a  straight  and  power- 
ful blow,  of  the  nature  and  significance  which 
Ballycullen  only  could  deal  out  of  its  malevolence 
and  its  perpetual  satrical  leer.  His  wandering, 

151 


152     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

affectionate  mind,  so  warm  always  with  his  great 
love  and  sympathy,  was  frozen  to  the  cold  atten- 
tion of  realisation  and  to-day  he  saw  his  native 
village  as  he  had  already  seen  it  many  a  time 
when  his  lonely  love,  struggling  from  his  im- 
prisoned heart  had  been  defeated  by  some  slash- 
ing and  brutal  blow  leaping  out  suddenly  with  a 
certain  treachery  from  the  life  of  this  place.  To- 
day it  was  raining,  too,  and  the  muddy  pools 
which  sometimes  gathered  upon  the  earth  of  the 
street  were  the  perfect  mirror  for  Ballycullen.  A 
relentless  drizzle  had  been  falling  on  to  twelve 
o'clock,  when  the  daily  papers  came  in  from  Dub- 
lin. He  was  all  eagerness  to  read  the  ac- 
count of  the  Howth  gun-running,  but  just  at  that 
moment  it  happened  that  numerous  customers 
came  into  the  shop,  women  exceedingly  gabby 
over  their  small  purchases,  who  even  distracted 
Marcus  from  whatever  he  might  be  doing  in  the 
parlour  to  come  in  and  have  a  look  at  them,  a 
desolate  and  lugubrious  expression  upon  his  dark 
countenance.  Then  he  went,  finally  it  would 
appear,  for  a  long,  drunken  day  in  the  parlour, 
and  the  shop  became  vacant  once  more.  .  .  . 

At  last  Michael  opened  the  paper  and  his  mind 
seemed  to  but  dimly  comprehend  the  amazing 
news  until  his  eyes  fell  upon  the  Bachelor's  Walk 
portion  of  it  —  the  massacre  —  and  then  his 
vision  was  blotted  into  a  fierce,  vengeful  con- 


1914  153 

sciousness.  He  seemed  to  remain  staring  out  for 
a  great  while  with  a  remarkable  look  of  sadness 
in  his  eyes,  such  as  the  defeated  protagonist 
might  wear  just  before  the  fall  of  the  final  cur- 
tain in  a  tragedy.  .  *  .  It  was  scarcely  the 
look  of  the  victorious  enthusiast  thinking  wildly 
out  of  his  dream.  But  it  was  not  a  dream.  His 
plan  for  a  rising  that  could  not  possibly  be  de- 
feated was  a  real  thing,  and  this  news  of  the  day, 
too,  was  real  and  full  of  old  truth,  for  it  told  of 
the  ancient  butchery  of  England.  Maybe  this 
would  show  the  people  of  Ireland  that  they  were 
not  so  far  distant  yet  from  what  Cromwell  had 
done  in  Wexford  and  Drogheda.  His  great  plan, 
of  course,  was  inclusive  in  such  a  calculation. 
The  weak,  yet  insinuating  foolishness  about  the 
overflowing,  sympathetic  breasts  of  the  democ- 
racy of  England  had  not  deceived  him.  All  his 
life  he  had  been  trying  to  tell  them  in  Bally- 
cullen  the  thing  of  which  this  was  such  a  desper- 
ate and  convincing  proof,  and  they  had  not 
listened  to  him.  The  seed  of  his  mind  had  been 
blown  on  the  indifferent  winds  of  Ballycullen  to 
find  no  place  of  rooting  in  their  hearts.  It  was 
only  last  night  that  he  had  tried  to  consolidate 
his  message  in  flaming  words.  He  had  told  them 
that  they  could  never  have  anything  or  be  any- 
thing until  they  had  done  with  England  and  that 
any  thought  or  endeavour  built  upon  other  foun- 


154      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

elation  was  but  vaporous  folly  and  the  dream  of  a 
dream.  .  .  .  He  did  not  notice  Marcus 
Flynn  beside  him,  so  stealthily  had  his  master 
come.  There  was  a  little  wicked  glint  in  the 
gombeen-man's  eye. 

"  Look  here,"  he  said,  snapping  the  paper 
from  Michael,  "  this  is  all  bloody  nonsense.  A 
lot  of  mad  headed  idiots  of  fellows,  maybe  in  the 
pay  of  the  Government,  getting  up  to  go  destroy 
Home  Rule.  And  think  of  solid,  respectable  men 
like  me  that's  after  giving  our  lives  to  it,  a  laugh- 
ing-stock in  the  country  if  we  don't  get  it  now. 
This  is  a  most  damnable  business  to  go  happen 
at  present  and  we  rising  up  like  one  man,  so  to 
speak,  to  finish  Carson." 

Michael  said  nothing,  for  this  was  the  kind  of 
talk  to  which  he  could  never  reply.  Besides,  to 
reply  to  Marcus  might  have  been  construed  as  a 
piece  of  impertinence,  worthy  the  losing  of  his 
job.  .  .  .  Now  Marcus  spoke  fiercely.  The 
derision  of  Ballycullen  to  its  uttermost  was  in  the 
diminution  of  Michael's  name : 

"  I  say,  will  you  listen  to  me,  Mickeen!  I 
made  a  man  of  you,  so  I  did,  and  if  you  don't 
keep  your  powder  dry  it'll  be  the  gutter  for  you 
again.  It's  your  mother  and  sister  you  have  to 
think  most  of  and  not  Ireland,  so  I'd  advise  you 
not  to  be  drinking.  I  have  my  good  name  and  the 
good  name  of  my  shop  to  keep  up,  so  I  have,  and 


1914  155 

it  doesn't  look  well.  Ireland  is  in  the  proper 
hands  to-day.  The  man  who  stops  the  onward 
march  of  the  nation  to  the  old  House  in  College 
Green  is  a  traitor  to  his  country.  Anything  that 
takes  the  mind  of  the  country  off  Home  Rule  is 
a  sin,  so  it  is,  and  plays  right  in  to  the  Orange 
camp.  This  wild  talk  about  fighting  for  the  free- 
dom of  Ireland  is  all  as  I  roved  out.  Carson 
doesn't  mean  to  fight,  nor  we  don't  mean  to  fight, 
but  we  want  him  to  think  we  are,  while  his  whole 
game  is  to  keep  us  from  thinking  that  he's  not. 
I'm  after  reading  about  the  Howth  business. 
Well,  wasn't  it  all  the  fault  of  them  lunatics  in 
Dublin  ?  Dublin  was  never  right  nor  proper  since 
that  cursed  Larkin  was  allowed  to  set  foot  in  it. 
All  a  bit  of  thickness  and  show-off  this  was,  and 
so  they  provoked  the  soldiers  to  shoot,  so  they  did. 
Why  didn't  they  bring  in  the  stuff  in  the  dead  of 
the  night  in  a  dark  place,  where  in  any  event  there 
could  never  be  more  than  a  few  peelers,  who  could 
be  bought  with  pints.  No,  of  course,  they  had  to 
show  off.  But  they'll  make  a  mistake  if  they 
think  that  is  going  to  rouse  the  country,  for  I 
know  Ireland  at  the  present  time.  It's  men  like 
me  with  a  stake  in  the  country  that's  looking  the 
proper  way  for  Home  Rule.  But  there  was  al- 
ways a  crowd  in  Ireland  ready  to  lead  the  peo- 
ple on  a  wild  goose  chase  and  to  spoil  the  game. 
I'm  a  patriot,  Mickeen.  You're  only  an  idiot. 


156      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

If  you  had  any  cutting  in  you  at  all  you'd  re- 
member that  Joe  Devlin  himself  was  a  grocer's 
curate  before  The  Cause  made  a  man  of  him." 

When  he  had  said  this  he  went  out  to  march 
himself  through  Ballycullen,  a  successful 
moneyed  man  with  a  right  to  have  an  opinion  of 
his  own.  It  was  his  intention  to  put  a  stop  to  the 
talk  of  those  who  might  be  beginning  to  express 
sympathy  with  the  lads  that  were  after  making 
fools  of  themselves.  In  spite  of  his  befuddled 
condition  it  was  the  chilling  common  sense  of 
Marcus'  words  which  forced  itself  upon  Michael 
and  left  him  with  not  a  little  of  the  hope  and 
purpose  ebbed  from  his  mind.  .  .  . 

The  day's  rain  had  now  turned  into  a  con- 
tinuous downpour  and  soon  men  were  coming 
into  the  village  because  they  could  not  work  in  the 
fields,  some  merely  to  divert  themselves  in  the 
pubs,  others  to  get  horses  shod  at  the  forge  as  well. 
Many  topical  remarks  were  passed  in  Marcus 
Flynn's  shop,  but  the  importance  of  the  thing  that 
had  happened  in  Dublin  was  subjugated  to  the 
leer  which  all  of  them  had  on  their  faces  for 
Michael. 

"There'll  be  no  marching  to-night ! "  one  would 
say  to  another  with  the  most  irritating  insistence, 
"  we're  all  tired  after  last  night  and  everything.  I 
wonder  will  we  be  supplied  with  boots  out  of  the 
Funds  of  the  organisation.  It's  all  damned  fine 


1914  157 

to  talk  about  giving  us  caps  and  belts  and  bando- 
liers that  we  wouldn't  wear  out  in  the  course  of 
our  natural  lives.  But  a  new  pair  of  boots  lasts 
no  time  at  the  marching." 

"  It's  only  a  kind  of  mug's  game,  anyway,  this 
military  business  after  a  hard  day's  work  when 
a  fellow  is  fit  for  little  more  than  lying  at  the 
back  of  a  ditch  to  have  a  snore  or  a  drink! " 

The  torture  of  this  day  for  Michael  super- 
seded that  of  all  his  experience  in  Ballycullen. 
It  was  a  continuous  battle  between  the  romantic 
notions  of  his  mind  and  the  hard  facts  of  all 
this  cruel  realism.  He  listened  in  vain  for  some 
remark  which  might  be  in  harmony  with  his 
burning  sympathy.  .  .  .  To-night  he  would 
have  to  visit  Connor  Carberry,  whose  blood 
would  be  on  fire  because  of  what  had  happened  in 
Dublin.  ...  He  knew  that  the  old  man 
would  have  been  flashed  into  a  full,  blazing 
ecstasy  by  the  news  that  men  had  not  forgotten 

how  to  die  for  Ireland.    ... 

******** 

The  first  intimation  of  the  Great  European  War 
broke  quietly  on  Ballycullen.  Always  so  inti- 
mately concerned  with  the  small  affairs  of  the  vil- 
lage and  the  parish  and  their  little  selves,  they  did 
not  perceive  the  full  ghastly  portent  of  the  first 
flickers  of  the  great  calamity.  Their  sense  of  in- 
sularity was  a  distinguishing  characteristic  so 


158     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

firmly  rooted  now  in  this  particular  year  of  Our 
Lord  that  it  had  almost  sapped  the  natural 
feelings  of  human  sympathy  which  should  have 
struggled  to  life  somehow,  even  in  the  Ireland  of 
1914.  But  the  sin  of  pride  which  is  the  root  of 
all  unkindness  and  negation  of  humanity  was  al- 
ready theirs.  There  was  a  mere  unreasonable 
gladness  upon  Michael  that  England  was  going  to 
war,  this  time  against  a  powerful  enemy,  and  not 
as  of  old,  against  the  Boers  or  inferior  races  of 
Africa,  or  the  East,  or  poor  Ireland.  He  tried  hard 
to  do  a  little  clear  thinking,  but  his  mind,  at  no 
time  very  supple  along  this  line,  did  not  suddenly 
move  towards  complete  understanding,  yet  as  the 
first  days  of  the  war  passed  into  the  beginning  of 
the  long,  bloody  encounters,  he  came  to  have  a  few 
hopes.  Perhaps  Ireland's  great  opportunity,  his 
great  opportunity,  would  come  now,  and  of  old  he 
had  learned  that  England's  difficulty  was  Ire- 
land's opportunity,  because  the  same  idea  was 
embodied  in  a  phrase  which  jumped  naked  con- 
tinually out  of  all  the  welter  of  speechmaking,  and 
to-day  it  would  seem  that  the  world  was  beginning 
to  be  swayed  altogether  by  wild,  copy-book 
phrases  of  that  kind. 

It  was  curious  to  see  now  the  attitude  of  the 
papers  that  had  been  most  fiercely  National- 
ist. Michael  recollected,  not  without  some  pain, 
that  it  had  been  different  at  the  time  of  the  Boer 


1914  159 

war,  which  was  now  but  a  far,  boyhood  memory. 
He  remembered  how  his  father  in  those  days,  the 
concluding  stages  of  his  broken  life,  had  been 
very  fond  of  reading  the  papers  to  old  Lem 
Broderick,  the  Fenian,  the  two  men  creating  a 
kind  of  madness  between  them,  like  that  of  Con- 
nor Carberry,  in  the  little,  poor  house,  amid  the 
mean  dejected  way  in  which  they  were  driven  to 
end  their  days.  ...  It  was  still  splendid 
to  think  of  the  attitude  of  the  Irish  newspapers 
in  those  days  because  the  little  heroic  handful 
of  Boers  had  afforded  a  parallel  to  the  poor, 
down-trodden  people  of  Ireland.  The  Irish 
members  of  Parliament  just  at  this  time  were 
absolute  rebels  but  the  Land  Bill  of  1903  had  not 
yet  been  passed.  The  Irish  Brigade,  under 
Colonel  Lynch  and  Major  MacBride,  was  fight- 
ing on  the  side  of  the  Boers,  and  there  were  men 
from  even  Ballycullen  fighting  on  the  side  of  the 
English,  and,  strange  to  say,  all  were  regarded 
equally  as  national  heroes.  The  supreme  nar- 
rowness of  mind  which  had  come  to  the  Irish 
farmer  with  the  passing  of  the  Land  Bill  of  1903 
had  not  yet  corroded  their  hearts,  although  the 
change  in  them  was  imminent.  Already  the  sym- 
pathies of  Michael,  working  in  unconscious 
harmony  with  the  old  memories,  were  drawing 
him  into  sympathy  with  the  Germans,  because, 
for  a  great  while,  surely,  it  had  seemed  that  all 


160     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

peoples,  even  a  proud,  iron  people  aiming 
towards  world-power,  might  appear  very  poor  and 
down-trodden  and  very  meek  and  humble  of  heart 
beside  the  villainy  and  the  might  of  Eng- 
land. .  .  .  The  food  with  which  he  had  sup- 
ported his  mind  had  only  built  it  immovable  upon 
a  sense  of  the  past.  Thus,  had  it  appeared  to  him 
a  traitorous,  in  fact  an  almost  blasphemous  thing, 
that  Sir  Edward  Grey  had  given  Mr.  Asquith 
the  opportunity  of  making  the  infamous  speech 
in  which  he  referred  to  Ireland  as  the  "one 
bright  spot."  It  seemed  that  this  had  been  the 
way  with  him  always.  His  mind  was  unable  to 
grasp  to  its  full  extent  and  in  all  the  variations 
of  its  possibilities  the  constant  flux  of  the  thing 
that  wiser  men  called  "  the  present." 

Now,  most  of  these  reservists  who  had  been 
prominent  in  drilling  the  Volunteers  were  being 
called  to  the  colours.  But  no  one  thought  of  this 
immediately  as  a  serious  blow  to  the  Organisation, 
seeing  that  all  the  national  soldiers  of  Ireland,  par- 
ticularly those  who  made  up  the  amazing  bat- 
talions of  officers,  now  considered  themselves 
fully  equipped  and  drilled,  and  did  not  want  any 
impertinence  from  cheeky,  drunken  "bowsies," 
that  used  to  be  considered  the  scruff  of  the  earth 
until  their  use  had  been  found  at  the  present  junc- 
ture. But,  continually  this  outlook  was  becoming 
changed,  almost  surprisingly  in  some  of  its  aspects. 


1914  161 

It  would  seem  that  even  the  Party  had  notions 
of  going  out  to  recruit.  Some  of  the  weightiest 
people  in  Ireland  had  already  pronounced  in 
favour  of  the  justice  of  the  Allies'  cause.  Numer- 
ous fine  young  men,  who  had  been  the  pride  of 
the  Volunteers  from  their  inception,  were  think- 
ing of  joining  the  army  for  the  little  while  that 
the  war  would  be  on,  a  few  months  or  so,  and  of 
"  seeing  a  bit  of  life."  Elderly  men,  too,  were  of 
a  sudden  showing  surprising  military  ardour  and 
in  this  connection  it  must  be  remembered  that 
the  ages  of  the  Howth  Volunteers  had  ranged 
from  nine  or  ten  years  to  the  honourable,  grey- 
haired  condition  of  sixty-five  years.  It  appeared 
to  many  that  on  the  word  of  the  almost  almighty 
Mr.  Redmond,  a  kind  of  Irish  Territorial  Force 
was  to  be  organised  "for  the  defense  of  the 
coasts,"  and  many  old  men  were  delighted  to 
think  that  here,  surely,  was  an  opportunity  of 
respite  from  the  long  grind  of  their  years.  To  de- 
fend the  coasts  —  poor  old  fools!  But  their  ex- 
cuse lay  in  their  longing  for  a  soft  job  to  afford 
them  peace  for  a  little  while  just  before  their  end. 
To  the  flaming,  angry  mind  of  Michael  it  ap- 
peared that  the  last  lingering  embers  of  Fenianism 
had  been  finally  quenched.  Yet  he  went  on  to 
raise  up  his  small,  lonely  voice  in  favour  of  the 
truth  in  these  days,  but  they  would  not  listen. 
.  .  .  Why  wasn't  he  backing  the  war  now,  and 


162      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

he  to  be  always  on  the  side  of  everything  new  on 
mad?  He  was  a  quare  idiot  entirely. 

"  Are  you  not  backing  up  the  war,  Mickeen?" 
said  Marcus  Flynn  to  him  very  morosely  one 
morning. 

"  I  don't  believe  in  it.  I  don't  consider  that  it 
is  any  of  Ireland's  business  to  go  mad  about  it." 

"  And  why  the  hell  don't  you?  What  am  I 
paying  you  for  only  to  believe  in  it?  and  in 
everything  I  say  or  do?  It's  a  powerful  and  a 
just  war  and  it  is  the  clear  duty  of  every  Irish- 
man living  to  go  out  and  fight,  and  die,  too,  if 
needs  be.  What  would  happen  a  man  like  me, 
the  backbone  of  the  country,  if  we  don't  fight? 
The  Germans  coming  in  on  top  of  us  and  taking 
everything  we  have.  What  would  the  like  of  you 
do  then  for  employment?  I'm  after  having  seri- 
ous complaints  from  big  parishioners,  people  with 
a  stake  in  the  country,  about  the  way  you  do  be 
blathering,  and  they  with  enough  worries  on  their 
minds  already  about  the  war.  Look  here, 
Mickeen,  I'm  after  getting  enough  trouble  from 
yourself  and  your  opinions  this  while  back  and 
if  you  don't  drop  it  you'll  be  mebbe  left  with  noth- 
ing to  do  but  join  the  very  army  that  you're  never 
done  but  running  down.  .  .  .  And  what  would 

your  mother  and  sister  do  then?    Eh,  Mickeen?" 
$          $          $          $          $    .      ifc          $          4 

Before  the  end  of  the  year  men  from  Bally- 


1914  163 

cullen,  reservists  who  had  been  called  up,  were 
being  killed  in  the  war,  and  a  recruiting  meeting 
had  been  held  in  Bally  cullen  at  which  the  prin- 
cipal speakers,  after  Captain  Beaumont  Fortescue 
and  the  Hon.  Herbert  Fitzherbert,  had  been 
Thomas  Cooney  and  Marcus  Flynn,  with  Am- 
brose Donohue  very  prominent  on  the  business 
side.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life  this  feeble, 
imitative  opportunist  had  been  permitted  to  rub 
shoulders  with  the  gentry  and  in  this  achieve- 
ment would  seem  to  have  reached  the  summit  of 
his  ambition.  Although  the  proceedings  were 
most  enthusiastic,  no  one  joined  up.  But  the  suc- 
cess of  association  to  which  he  had  attained,  drove 
Ambrose  Donohue  to  apply  for  a  commission 
which  was  granted  him  a  little  later  in  the  Army 
Service  Corps.  The  British  bent  of  his  mind, 
his  "  shoneenism,"  had  given  him  these  convic- 
tions, of  which  this  was  a  result,  combined  with 
the  fact  that  he  did  not  see  much  further  possi- 
bilities in  the  Volunteers.  .  .  .  Although 
of  course  not  to  the  full  extent  of  joining  it  in  a 
body,  the  collective  mind  of  Ballycullen  had 
moved  towards  the  army  and  Ambrose,  as  al- 
ways, had  moved  with  it,  thus  helping  still  further 
to  fix  him  as  the  popular  young  man  that  he  was. 
Besides  all  these  and  other  considerations  a  com- 
mission in  the  Army  represented  a  jump  at  one 
bound  into  the  very  bosom  of  an  exclusive  set. 


164     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

All  his  life  he  had  been  striving  to  ape  distantly 
the  very  thing  he  would  now  be  a  part  of  in  its 
essence  and  reality.  .  .  .  Besides  he  might 
get  a  fine  job  when  the  war  was  over.  In  fact  it 
would  appear  that  the  war  had  been  sent  to  make 
him,  just  as  it  had  been  sent  to  unmake  the  Bally- 
cullen  Volunteers.  These  had  dwindled  hope- 
lessly. A  rumour  had  gained  currency  that,  in  the 
event  of  a  general  call  to  military  service,  the 
Volunteers  would  be  the  very  first  to  be 
taken.  .  .  .Of  coure,  they  fully  believed 
everything  that  was  said  in  the  Nationalist  Press 
about  it  being  right  and  just  to  go  out  to  fight, 
but  they  did  not  believe  that  any  such  noble  obli- 
gation should  be  extended  to  them.  The  last  hope 
of  being  given  the  soft  job  of  minding  the  coasts 
had,  by  this  time,  disappeared  from  the  minds  of 
the  old  men.  The  prospect  of  the  war  being  ex- 
tended to  Ireland  seemed  to  have  vanished  since 
the  German  fall-back  from  Paris  had  happened. 
The  price  of  cattle  had  risen  enormously  and  all 
anybody  wanted  was  to  be  left  alone  to  make 
money.  The  public  opinion  of  the  country 
seemed  to  be  perilously  suspended  between  sup- 
port of  those  who  went  about  recruiting  with  the 
intention  of  saving  them  from  the  Germans  and 
of  those  who  spoke  against  it,  thereby  demonstrat- 
ing their  intention  of  saving  them  from  the  dark 
conscriptionist  intention  of  England  with  regard 


1914  165 

to  this  country.  Of  course  a  "  mouth "  like 
Michael  Dempsey  did  not  matter  either  way.  To 
begin  with,  he  had  no  stake  in  the  country,  and,  in 
the  second  place,  he  did  not  live  in  Dublin,  from 
whence  a  dark  wave  of  rebel  oratory  had  begun 
to  flow. 

«JC  3|»  9|C  JJC  3|C  3)C  9|C  2|C 

On  the  last  night  of  1914  Michael  was  stand- 
ing desolately  at  the  corner  when  he  heard  a 
faint  drumming  in  the  distance.  It  seemed  like 
the  approach  of  the  Ballycullen  Band  coming  in 
from  the  deserted  drilling  place  of  the  Volunteers 
to  ring  out  the  old  year,  but  it  was  a  mean,  feeble 
noise,  which  displayed  great  gaps  in  the  music, 
almost  an  insult  to  the  dying  year,  this  poor 
flickering  sound. 

"  The  army  is  now  concentrating  upon  Bally- 
cullen," said  a  wag  who  propped  the  wall  by  the 
corner.  But  from  the  very  moment  of  his  mo- 
mentous declaration,  the  sound  seemed,  unfortu- 
nately, to  die  further  and  further  away,  until  at 
last  it  might  be  some  very  sad  thing  going  out 
forever  with  the  dying  year.  .  .  .  And,  in 
this  moment  it  seemed  that  some  part  of  Michael's 
soul  had  gone  away  forever,  too,  for  there  was  a 
couple  just  passing  now  and  he  barely  lifted  his 
eyes  to  look  at  them,  although  they  were  two  whom 
he  knew  very  well,  Second  Lieutenant  Ambrose 
Donohue  and  Mirandolina  Conway,  the  girl  he 


166      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

had  confused,  in  his  love-thoughts  of  her  and 
Ireland,  with  Sara  Curran,  when  they  had  per- 
formed together  in  the  play  about  Robert  Emmet. 
It  was  queer  to  think  now  that  the  real  Sara  had 
married  a  British  officer.  .  .  .  Anyhow, 
what  matter  ?  A  man  should  have  only  one  love, 
his  girl  or  his  country. 

Ambrose  Donohue  looked  remarkably  spruce 
in  his  well-fitting  uniform,  while  even  the  very 
pockets  of  his  own  poor  suit  were  bulged  and 
broken  with  books  and  papers  about  Ireland. 

It  seemed  little  wonder  that  Mirandolina  had  at 
last  made  her  choice  between  them. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  DARK  YEARS 

AS  time  drifted  on  more  men  from  Bally- 
cullen  went  into  the  army,  driven  there 
for  the  most  part  by  the  ruthless,  eco- 
nomic reasons  of  the  moment.    Although  Michael 
was  intensely  opposed  to  the  ideal,  or,  perhaps  ab- 
sence of  ideal,  for  which  they  stood,  he  could  feel 
the  pangs  of  their  isolation  when  they  came  back 
from  the  fields  of  death  to  Ballycullen. 

"  Isn't  this  getting  to  be  an  awful  bloody 
place?  "  he  would  often  hear  one  say  to  another  as 
they  stood  lonely  by  the  corner.  There  they 
would  be,  strange  aliens  with  frightened  eyes,  try- 
ing to  express  themselves  in  the  jagged  jargon 
of  hell,  which  was  their  only  acquisition  from  the 
Great  War.  .  .  .  They,  somehow,  always  ap- 
peared bedraggled  and  forlorn,  all  mud  and 
blood  as  they  came  into  Ballycullen  and  into  the 
pubs.  They  might  have  a  few  pounds  saved 
from  the  money  they  had  got  from  passing 
through  hell  and  immediately  they  would  fall 
into  the  hands  of  the  corner-boys  and  lowest 
"  bowsies  "  of  Ballycullen.  There  might  be  a 

167 


168      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

few  quiet  days  in  an  attempt  to  win  oblivion  and 
blindness  from  appalling  memories  and  horrid 
sights.  Then  a  fight,  maybe,  with  one  of  the 
corner-boys,  and  blood  drawn  in  the  muck  of  the 
street,  and  shouts  and  the  re-whooping  of  half 
frightened,  half-savage  war  cries  from  Ypres  and 
Bethune,  with  Sergeant  Leonard  suddenly  coming 
sweating  amongst  them  to  quell  the  noise.  .  .  . 
There  were  others,  of  course,  the  more  innocent 
of  the  lambs  who  had  gone  on  young,  supple 
limbs  to  the  slaughter.  Michael  would  often  stop 
to  drop  a  word  with  them,  for  they,  too,  were 
drawn  to  the  mean  torture  of  the  corner.  When- 
ever he  heard  them  speak,  his  mind  was  kindled 
into  a  fuller  and  finer  sympathy.  He  could  see 
that  something  monstrous  had  been  suddenly  pro- 
jected into  their  lives  until  they  were  no  longer  the 
light-hearted  fellows  with  whom  he  had  played 
football  and  hurling  but  a  year  or  two  before. 
And  it  was  all  the  more  strange  to  think  that  his 
countrymen  were  beginning  to  have  a  certain 
mean  and  unworthy  anger  in  their  hearts  against 
these  poor  lads.  Michael  could  always  feel  as 
he  talked  with  them  the  guiltiness  of  those  who 
had  told  them  that  it  was  really  for  Ireland  they 
were  fighting  when  they  went  to  France.  It  was 
surely  a  lonely  destiny  to  which  they  had  been 
called.  Their  own  countrymen  did  not  want  them 
now  and  England  would  not  want  them  for  very 


THE  DARK  YEARS  169 

long  after  they  had  served  her  turn.  .  .  ,  He 
was  often  maddened  by  the  sound  of  some  gross 
insult  flung  savagely  upon  hard  words  at  one  of 
these  poor  souls  by  the  corner.  ....•'.  .  But 
how  could  he,  as  a  Sinn  Feiner,  possibly  say  a 
word?  He  was  rather  content  to  expect  consola- 
tion for  himself  and  the  tormentors  of  these  from 
those  who  were  striving  to  prevent  young  Irish- 
men from  enlisting  in  the  British  army.  Yet,  very 
often  would  it  appear  to  him  that  the  men  who 
were  getting  jailed  for  this  by  England  were  in 
enmity  to  a  certain  rotten  element  in  their  own 
country  as  well  as  to  that  which  lay  further  afield. 
And,  already  was  it  extending  further  into  his 
soul,  this  realisation  of  the  traitorous  element 
which  continually  stood  for  the  denial  of  what 
was  great  and  beautiful  and  heroic  in  the  soul  of 
Ireland.  It  was  something  more  than  a  portion  of 
the  afflicted  warp  of  all  human  life.  It  was  a 
quality  which  stood  up  fiercely  urging  defeat  of 
what  was  bravest  and  best  always.  There  were 
a  great  many  around  Ballycullen  who  disap- 
proved of  the  present  activity  of  the  Sinn  Feiners. 

"  Damn  it,  but  they're  going  a  bit  too  far  with 
it,  anyway.  Now,  d'ye  know  what  I'm  going  to 
tell  you?  I  would  not  like  to  see  England  bet 
in  this  war.  That's  honest ;  but,  sure,  I  have  to  be 
in  the  fashion  by  talking  the  other  way." 

He  saw,  too,  that  the  aspiring  fops  of  the  lo- 


170     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

cality,  the  imitators  aforetime  of  St.  John  Mar- 
lowe, went  about  now  with  all  the  more  rabid 
Sinn  Fein  papers  sticking  ostentatiously  out  of 
their  pockets,  "  The  Spark  "  and  "  Honesty  " 
replacing  "  London  Opinion  "  and  "  The  Win- 
ning Post." 

"  Did  you  see  this?"  they  would  suddenly  say, 
taking  out  one  or  another  of  these  obscure  sheets 
and  pointing  to  some  scurrilous  and  laboured 
witicism  at  the  expense  of  T.  N.  Kettle  or  Stephen 
Gwyn,  or  another  of  the  other  recruiting  sergeants. 
As  one  with  a  fairly  long-standing  reputation  for 
being  a  Sinn  Feiner,  Michael  was  forced  to  show 
some  interest,  although  this  was  scarcely  Sinn 
Fein.  There  was  a  time,  not  so  far  back,  when 
Sinn  Fein  seemed  to  light  a  lamp  which  shone  out 
over  the  world.  But  this  was  mean;  this  was 
low.  .  .  .  Yet,  there  were,  even  still,  grand 
flashing  moments.  ...  It  was  in  "  The 
Spark  "  that  he  first  read  Padraic  Pearse's  ora- 
tion over  the  grave  of  O'Donovan  Rossa,  the 
heart  within  him  leaping  gladly  to  the  throb  of 
the  mighty  words : 

"  It  has  been  thought  well,  before  we  turn  away 
from  this  place  in  which  we  have  laid  the  mortal 
remains  of  O'Donovan  Rossa,  that  one  among  us 
should,  in  the  name  of  all,  speak  the  praise  of  that 
valiant  man.  And  if  there  is  anything  that  makes 
it  fitting  that  I  rather  than  some  other,  I  rather 


THE  DARK  YEARS  171 

than  one  of  the  grey-haired  men  grown  old  with 
him  in  suffering,  should  speak  here,  it  is,  perhaps, 
that  I  may  be  taken  as  speaking  on  behalf  of  a 
new  generation  which  has  been  re-baptized  in  the 
Fenian  faith  and  which  has  accepted  the  responsi- 
bilities of  carrying  out  the  Fenian  programme." 

He  was  one  of  the  generation  for  which  Pearse 
spoke  thus  so  proudly.  He  was  a  man  of  the  age 
of  Cuchullain  and  the  Red  Branch  Knights,  the 
Homeric  Age  of  Ireland.  But  what  of  the  bulk  in 
reality  of  the  Irishman  of  his  time?  The  breed 
of  them  had  been  great  fighters  in  the  "  eighties  " 
for  the  land  and  the  fill  of  their  bellies  but  never 
since  nor  perhaps  never  again. 

All  through  the  winter  he  had  knowledge, 
through  the  little  papers,  of  what  was  passing  in 
Dublin.  Some  part  of  Ireland,  at  least,  was  being 
freed  from  the  drugging,  poisonous  influence  of 
Redmond  and  his  Party.  He  was  with  them  most 
truly  in  the  unity  of  spiritual  kinship;  his  little 
room  now  was  at  once  a  temple  and  a  cell.  It 
was  dedicated  to  the  memory  of  all  those  who  had 
died  for  Ireland  and  it  seemed  to  hold,  through 
power  of  his  lonely  brotherhood,  the  imprisoned 
souls  of  those  who  would  die  again.  In  Bally- 
cullen,  now,  there  was  urgent  need  of  such  spirit- 
ual communion.  .  .  .  He  refilled  his  mind 
continuously  with  the  dark,  destructive  anger  of 
Mitchel. 


172     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

Some  evenings  when  he  would  take  a  walk  to 
ponder  what  he  had  read  on  the  nights  before,  he 
might  meet  Mirandolina  walking,  lonely,  too,  and 
only  the  faintest  glimmer  of  recognition  would 
pass  between  them.  The  grind  of  Marcus 
Flynn's  had  remained  much  the  same.  He  be- 
gan to  think  of  "  bettering  "  himself,  of  going 
to  Dublin.  He  had  already  mentioned  his  inten- 
tion casually  to  a  few,  but  he  could  see  that,  even 
so  soon,  was  it  having  a  definite  result  in  two  di- 
rections. Marcus  Flynn  spoke  of  raising  his 
salary  and  Mirandolina  made  efforts  to  struggle 
back  into  his  friendship.  .  .  .  Once  or 
twice  upon  meeting,  it  would  seem  quite  acci- 
dentally, she  had  glanced  at  him  shyly  with  a 
smile  hovering  tremulously  upon  her  lips. 

About  Christmas  the  results  became  definite; 
his  salary  was  raised  and  he  became  friendly  with 
Mirandolina  again.  They  had  soon  fallen  to 
talking  just  as  if  nothing  had  happened  at  any 
time  to  set  up  even  the  faintest  misunderstanding 
between  them,  and,  even  though  he  began  to  grow 
more  and  more  fond  of  her,  he  did  not  become 
less  fond  of  Ireland.  There  seemed  to  be  upon 
her  now  an  eagerness  to  be  meeting  him  that 
was  curiously  fettering  when  he  had  so  recently 
thought  of  being  away  in  Dublin.  .  .  .  Be- 
sides, in  her  presence,  too,  he  never  felt  quite  so 
free.  .  .  .  Quite  unconsciously,  perhaps,  but 


THE  DARK  YEARS  173 

by  her  talk,  she  would  be  always  dragging  him 
down  from  his  dream  into  the  barren  byways  of 
life  which  straggled  out  like  muddy  boreens  from 
all  the  talk  of  Bally cullen.  Yet,  this  was  life.  .  .  . 
Such  and  such  a  couple  were  engaged  and  would 
soon  be  married.  .  .  .  How  they  were  getting 
a  little  place  and  setting  up  a  shop  of  their 
own.  .  .  .  How  it  must  be  so  grand  to  have  a 
place  of  one's  own  and  to  be  settled  down.  .  .  . 
The  power  of  Bally  cullen  (this  was  the  burden  of 
her  talk)  could  not  then  cut  so  powerfully  be- 
tween two  that  loved.  .  .  .  There  were  times 
when  his  lonely  soul  would  seem  eager  beyond  all 
greater  yearning  to  snatch  some  comfort  from  her 
words,  and  so  they  would  be  supremely  happy  in 
their  friendship  upon  many  an  idyllic  night. 
But  he  would  be  continually  breaking  away  in 
his  mind  from  the  trend  of  the  talk  which  was  a 
joy  to  her.  .  .  . 

Sometimes  she  grew  petulant  and  said  cruel, 
unreasonable  little  things,  as  a  woman  always  will 
in  the  unseen  presence  of  the  thing  that  threatens 
her  love.  .  .  .  He  would  talk  of  what  was 
brewing  in  Dublin  and  what  might  happen  there 
soon.  .  .  .  Then  her  love  would  be  most  won- 
drously  re-kindled,  and  she  would  speak  in  that 
wild  way  of  the  heart  which  is  past  all  under- 
standing of  the  mind.  She  would  kiss  and 
fondle  him  and  whisper  winning,  soothing  words 


i!74     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

as  a  mother  might  to  a  wayward  child  whose 
mind  was  upon  some  wild,  dangerous  way  of 

play.     .     .     . 

******** 

About  St.  Patrick's  Day,  1916,  she  almost  felt 
herself  losing  her  grip  of  him  again  and  she  grew 
afraid  to  have  him  away  from  her  in  the  evenings. 
It  seemed  to  her  almost  as  if  one  whole  evening's 
brooding  in  his  lonely  room  might  lead  to  dis- 
aster. There  was  something  in  the  air.  .  .  . 
And  then  came  Easter  Week,  stark  and  terrible 
in  its  surprise. 

Someone  who  had  travelled  to  and  from  the 
Fairyhouse  races  on  a  bicycle  told  it  in  Thomas 
Cooney's  and  in  Marcus  Flynn's  almost  simul- 
taneously. To  the  lovers  this  news  was  tre- 
mendous, thrilling,  filling  him  with  a  sudden  sense 
of  pain,  her  with  a  feeling  of  anxious  gladness. 
Thomas  Cooney  had  merely  torn  the  paper  he  was 
reading  in  the  drapery  into  a  hundred  "  fliggits," 
and  Marcus  Flynn  had  solemnly  cursed  his  God 
and  then  retreated  to  the  comfort  of  the  bottle.  .  .  . 

It  was  a  dark,  misty  night  and  all  day  the  pools 
had  been  like  dull  mirrors  of  tragedy  upon  the 
street  of  Ballycullen.  .  .  .  He  could  not  speak 
to  her  as  she  clung  wildly  to  his  arm  all  along  the 
old  way  of  the  ivy  boughs.  ...  It  was  in 
Dublin  he  should  be  on  this  Easter  Monday  in 
the  year  of  our  Lord,  1916,  fighting  for  his  coun- 


THE  DARK  YEARS  1 75 

try  with  the  men  of  Ireland.  It  seemed  as  if  all 
his  life  should  have  moved  inevitably  to  this  glad 
consummation.  He  was  wildly  silent,  merely 
sighing  nervously. 

"  I  am  sorry,  Michael,"  she  said.  "  It  is  I 
who  have  kept  you  from  them.  God  knows  I 
have  done  it,  but  I  was  glad  to-night  when  I 
heard  how  it  had  come  to  this.  I  knew  that  if 
you  had  gone  to  Dublin  there  before  Christmas, 
then  you'd  have  been  out  with  them  now.  Im- 
agine little  me  doing  this  with  my  talk  and  kisses. 
Do  you  remember  the  poetry  book  that  you  lent 
me,  The  Eyes  of  Youth,  with  the  Arab  love  song 
by  Padraic  Colum?  Don't  you  remember  the 
lines  ? 

"  And  as  for  the  kisses  of  women — these  are  honey, 

the  poet  sings, 

But  the  honey  of  kisses  beloved  it  is  lime  for  the 
spirit's  wings." 

She  laughed  almost  hysterically. 

"  Oh,  I'm  glad,  God  knows  I'm  glad,  for  do- 
ing what  kept  you  here!  ' 

She  clung  to  him  in  passionate  thankfulness 
to  herself  for  his  presence  by  her  side  as  she  went 
on  babbling  love  words  which  were  half  unheard 
by  him.  .  .  .  Then  she  began  to  speak 
quietly : 

"  But,  listen,  Michael,  where's  the  use  in  it  at 


176     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

all?  Sure,  they  can't  be  more  than  a  little  hand- 
ful, anyway,  and  maybe  they're  beaten  by  this. 
Don't  you  know  well  what  the  English  are  ?  Sure, 
poor  little  foolish  me  never  knew  until  you  taught 
me  the  history  of  Ireland.  May  the  Lord  Jesus 
have  mercy  upon  the  souls  of  them  that's  dying 
for  Ireland  this  night!  ' 

These  last  words  seemed  to  stir  him  a  little  out 
of  his  trance.  .  .  .  They  smote  him  with  a 
sense  of  the  pitiful  littleness  of  all  human  life, 
and  it  had  been  given  Mirandolina  to  speak  them. 
They  made  him  hear  again,  in  one  startling  in- 
stant of  remembrance,  his  own  words  on  the  night 
they  had  first  come  to  talk  greatly  to  one  another 
during  the  production  of  the  Robert  Emmet  play 
in  the  Courthouse.  He  had  spoken  that  night  of 
dying  for  Ireland  and  surely  now  he  must  be  no 
more  in  her  eyes  than  the  drunken  braggarts  of 
Ballycullen,  who  had  ever  taken  the  easiest  way 
of  making  great  fellows  of  themselves  in  the  eyes 
of  their  girls  by  talking  of  dying  for  Ireland.  .  .  . 
He  was  of  their  generation  and  their  creed  and 
yet  he  was  not  in  Dublin  with  those  who  were 
dying  to-night.  ...  It  appeared  suddenly  to 
his  agonised  consciousness  as  an  abnegation  of 
his  manhood. 

Yet  had  the  quiet  pity  of  her  words  flashed 
him  into  dearer  kinship  with  those  who  were  dead 
or  dying.  And  so  it  was  that  the  first  words  he 


JHE  DARK  YEARS  177, 

spoke  were  nearer  to  reality  than  any  which  had 
yet  passed  between  them. 

"  I  hope  you  don't  think  bad  of  me  for  this, 
Mirandolina,  that  I  am  not  there,  and  that  be- 
cause of  it  you  will  never  throw  the  laugh  in  my 
eyes.  I'm  chained  here,  God  knows  I  am.  My 
father  lost  all  by  fighting  this  same  fight,  al- 
though the  methods  were  different.  There's  my 
mother  and  sister,  Mirandolina,  and  you  know 
that  I  must  keep  them  as  best  I  can.  It  would  be 
hard  to  see  them  having  to  stretch  out  the  hand 
to  the  purse-proud  shopkeepers  of  Ballycullen  or 
go  down  the  road  some  lonely  evening  and  into 
the  workhouse." 

"  Of  course  not,  darling.  I  understand  aye, 
even  far  better  than  you.  Sure,  it  is  all  this  that 
I  have  been  striving  hard  for  so  long  to  make  you 
see  that  Ballycullen,  and  all  it  means  to  you,  are 
nearer  than  Ireland.  God  knows,  Michael,  I'd 
do  anything  for  you  and  it  goes  to  my  heart  to 
see  you  wasting  yourself  upon  impossible  things 
and  impossible  dreams.  In  a  day  or  two  you'll 
be  seeing  how  foolish  all  this  wild  adventure  in 
Dublin  was,  and  then,  maybe,  it's  what  you'll  be 
thanking  me.  And,  although  I  don't  know  them 
to  speak  to,  I'd  be  glad,  indeed,  to  be  telling  this 
to  your  mother  and  sister." 

Her  words  in  their  quietness  were  so  very 
real  that  it  was  little  wonder  he  seemed  to  come 


178      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

down  gasping  a  little  from  what  suddenly  ap- 
peared merely  a  cloudy  eminence  of  conceited 
dreaming.  Already  was  struggling  into  his  con- 
sciousness a  certain  disillusionment  regarding 
this  Easter  Rising.  They  might  be  beaten,  it  was 
true,  but  they  were  righting  this  ancient  battle 
against  England  and  so  his  heart  was  with 
them.  .  .  ^ 

There  was  peace  upon  the  mind  of  Mirando- 
lina  at  parting.  She  knew  that  she  had  tri- 
umphed over  him  even  in  this  great  crisis.  It 
was  a  somewhat  sobered  Michael  Dempsey  who 
went  back  to  the  house  where  he  lived  with  his 
mother  and  sister.  .  .  .  His  thought  was  not 
wholly  introspective.  The  greatest  thing  since 
the  Rebellion  of  Robert  Emmet  was  happening 
this  night  in  Dublin,  yet  Ballycullen  appeared 
quite  undisturbed.  The  most  gallant  gentlemen 
since  the  Fenians  of  '67,  the  Fenians  of  1916, 
were  dying  for  love  of  them,  and  yet  he  could  see 
that,  in  their  cowardice,  the  men  of  Ballycullen 
were  going  to  bed  earlier  than  usual.  Through 
the  mind  of  his  girl  on  this  very  evening  he  had 
begun  to  see  again  in  its  full  significance  the 
immense  power  which  would  range  itself  on  the 
side  of  England  now,  and  spell  defeat,  as  always. 
And  yet,  as  he  closed  the  door  of  his  little  room 
behind  him,  he  was  not  without  a  prayerful  hope 
that,  by  some  great  atonement,  it  might  be  cleansed, 


THE  DARK  YEARS  179 

and  that  his  country  might  yet  be  seen  very  radi- 
ant in  a  mirror  of  blood.     .     .     . 

$  $  £  4t  4*  4t  $  $ 

He  remained  there,  torn  to  his  very  soul,  until 
near  daybreak  when  he  proceeded  very  carefully 
to  burn  his  plans  for  a  successful  rising.  .  .  . 
The  dawn  itself  had  never  seemed  to  be  so  coldly 
bright  as  he  sat  there  over  the  ashes  that  remained 
of  them  in  the  little  grate.  .  .  . 


CHAPTER  XV 

EASTER  WEEK,   1916 

THE  next  fortnight  passed  in  one  continuous 
whirl  of  rumour.  No  one  seemed  to  real- 
ise what  was  happening  in  Dublin  al- 
though all  were  agreed  that  something  fierce  was 
going  on.  After  all  his  reading  of  the  history  of 
rebellions,  mistily  radiant  through  the  perspective 
of  the  years,  it  was  curious  to  be  living  through 
the  period  when  a  real  rebellion  was  passing  in 
Dublin.  The  most  fantastical  stories  were  being 
told  each  day  in  Thomas  Cooney's  and  in  Marcus 
Flynn's.  There  was  to  Michael  a  most  ludicrous 
and  contradictory  quality  in  every  item  of  news. 
It  was  infinitely  sickening  to  see  the  things  of  gold 
all  muddied  with  the  dirt  of  the  street. 

One  of  the  strangest  things  was  one  of  the  first 
to  be  apparent.  With  those  who  had  recently  ex- 
pressed rebel  sympathies  there  was  some  kind  of 
feeling  that  the  rebellion  was  in  the  nature  of  a 
personal  affront.  It  was  all  very  well  to  have 
talked,  to  have  shown  enthusiasm  in  support  of 
the  thing  that  was  saving  them  from  military 
service,  but  this  rebellion  now  was  neither  right 

180 


EASTER  WEEK  1916  181 

nor  proper,  so  everyone  said.  Besides,  it  would 
give  the  Government  an  opportunity  of  coming 
down  on  Ireland  once  more.  It  was  made  to 
appear  as  bad  tactics,  for  how  the  hell,  they  said, 
could  England  have  budged  if  they  had  merely 
let  on  they  were  going  to  fight  the  way  the  Irish 
Party  had  worked  it  for  long  years?  In  fact,  to 
many  it  appeared  that  the  Irish  Party  had  merely 
provoked  this  outburst,  like  the  clever  devils  they 
were,  so  that  they  might  soon  sweep  tremendously 
into  power  again. 

The  first  definite  news  that  came  was  news  of 
defeat,  in  itself,  perhaps,  old  and  honourable  in 
Ireland,  but  still  defeat,  a  saddening  thing  telling 
as  of  old  of  wasted  bravery  and  of  wasted  blood. 
Michael  found  himself  very  curiously  mixed  up 
in  the  reality  of  thought  which  replaced  the  phan- 
tasy of  the  rumours.  Larkin's  crowd  were  out 
again  and  this  was  something  in  the  nature  of  a 
real  attack  upon  the  people  of  Ballycullen,  at 
least  to  their  own  way  of  thinking.  There  were 
not  a  few  of  them  who  had  lost  money  through 
their  dividends  declining  in  the  Dublin  United 
Tramways  during  the  period  of  the  great  strike. 
Michael,  never  ready  to  speak  ill  of  any  man,  had 
not  spoken  ill  of  Larkin.  The  subtle  bond  which 
united  him  to  all  men  struggling  for  the  right  had 
manifested  itself  again  with  regard  to  the  labour 
leader.  There  were  men  who  looked  darkly  at 


182      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

him  now  that  they  remembered  this.  .  .  . 
Wasn't  Connolly  in  it  and  wouldn't  Larkin  have 
been  in  it,  too,  if  they  hadn't  run  him  out  of  the 
country?  It  was  something  damnable  to  think 
of  that  crowd  robbing  the  poor,  unfortunate  shop- 
keepers and  employers  of  Dublin.  .  .  .  Mar- 
cus Flynn  fumed  in  and  out  of  the  shop  continu- 
ously and  his  fury  was  so  immense  at  all  times 
that  Michael  knew  full  well  that,  were  he  foolish 
enough  to  open  his  mouth,  it  would  spell  instant 
dismissal.  .  .  .  He  had  never  seen  his  em- 
ployer quite  in  this  state  before.  He  was  like  a 
raging  madman.  Nothing  else  could  explain  the 
extraordinary  fact  that  he  had  gone  into  Thomas 
Cooney's  and  stood  himself  a  drink,  Thomas  al- 
most falling  out  of  his  standing  because  of  the 
unaccustomed  friendliness  of  the  action.  On  the 
same  day  Thomas  himself  lurched  into  the  shop 
where  Michael  was,  looking  for  his  "  old  friend 
Marcus  "  to  have  a  chat  with  him.  A  little  later 
he  could  hear  them  complimenting  one  another 
that  "  the  whole  country  was  united  now  against 
them  damned  ruffians  that  were  after  breaking 
out  in  Dublin." 

In  the  days  immediately  after  this,  the  feeling 
of  unity  seemed  to  find  further  expression.  Often 
as  he  stood  at  the  door  now  striving  half  blindly 
to  glimpse  some  meaning  on  the  street  of  Bally- 
cullen,  he  would  see  within  earshot  the  Sergeant 


EASTER  WEEK  1916  183 

discussing  the  situation  with  a  group  of  young 
men. 

"D'ye  know  what  I'm  going  to  tell  you?  Sure 
it's  all  nonsense.  The  Government'll  make  mince- 
meat of  them." 

He  became  more  emphatic  in  his  thought  of 
the  rebels'  villainy  when  he  spoke  of  Ashbourne 
and  the  battle  that  had  been  fought  there. 

"  The  curse  of  hell  on  the  Cpunty  Meath  men 
and  the  curse  of  hell  on  the  County  Dublin  men. 
The  bad  drop  was  in  them  to  go  attack  the 
police!  " 

Between  all,  the  poor  man  had  been  given  an 
anxious  time.  The  worry  come  of  his  own  cow- 
ardice was  upon  him  and,  besides  that,  as  part  of 
his  job,  he  was  expected  to  put  some  courage  into 
the  remaining  peelers  of  Ballycullen.  As  these 
were  mostly  married  men,  one  or  another  of  their 
wives  was  almost  always  certain  to  be  in  the  bar- 
rack wailing  loudly  in  dread  that  her  husband 
would  have  to  go  to  "  The  Front."  Then  there 
were  the  worries  to  which  he  was  subjected  exter- 
nally by  the  shopkeepers  of  Ballycullen.  They 
were  all  in  such  a  state  about  their  money.  The 
money  in  the  keeping  of  the  Post  Office  had  al- 
ready been  transferred  to  the  barracks  and  so  a 
headline  had  been  struck  which  all  of  them  were 
anxious  to  copy.  They  had  him  worried  almost 
out  of  his  mind,  he  said. 


184     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

On  the  Friday  of  the  first  week  when  Mr.  Alex- 
ander Waddell  and  Mr.  St.  John-  Marlowe  did 
not  arrive  as  usual  from  Castleconner  at  twelve 
o'clock,  there  was  a  kind  of  panic.  The  little 
shopkeepers  ran  this  way  and  that,  asking  one 
another  did  they  think  had  the  Bank  gone  smash 
or  what  on  earth  was  to  become  of  them  at 
all.  So  the  torture,  replacing  the  mean  joy  of 
this  moment  when  every  one  of  them  had  been 
accustomed  to  run  up  to  the  Bank  with  their  bits 
of  money  in  their  fists,  had  come  inevitably. 
Therefore,  it  was  little  wonder  that  the  sergeant 
was  mad,  for  how  could  a  man  in  danger  of  his 
life  and  having  the  anxiety  of  a  lot  of  people  in 
danger  of  their  money  upon  him  at  the  same  time, 
be  expected  to  remain  calm.  He  cursed  a  great 
deal,  the  Sinn  Feiners,  the  Government,  and  the 
day  he  joined  the  force.  There  was  something 
decent  about  being  a  soldier.  One  had  only  one 
bother  to  face  but  this  was  a  very  nest  of  annoy- 
ance. 

On  the  Monday  of  the  second  week  a  diversion 
was  created  by  the  appearance  of  rambling 
Seumas  in  the  street.  He  was  one  who  had  come 
often  to  Ballycullen,  a  powerful  dark  man  with 
a  great  voice  and  a  fiddle.  The  reputation  of 
Seumas  consisted  in  the  rumour  that  he  tramped 
this  way  out  of  Connacht  and  up  through  the 
Midlands  making  a  fine  living  out  of  the  people 


EASTER  WEEK  1916  185 

of  Ballycullen,  who  had  so  many  scoundrels  like 
him  ready  to  thrive  on  them.  In  his  ballads  he 
communicated  and  kept  alive  the  history  of  Ire- 
land. As  he  had  gone  from  door  to  door  pro- 
ceeding through  his  repertoire,  he  had,  to  his  own 
thinking  at  least,  maintained  a  little  flicker  of 
nationality.  But  of  late  he  had  come  to  be  re- 
garded merely  as  a  ragged  survival  from  a  van- 
ished Ireland,  who,  in  October  and  in  April, 
passed  this  way,  lifting  a  good  bit  of  money  out 
of  Ballycullen  by  his  performances  from  door  to 
door.  In  fact,  he  had  always  left  it  with  his 
breeches  pocket  heavy  with  coppers  and  calling 
down  a  blessing  on  all  the  good  people  who  were 
there. 

Now,  this  evening,  as  he  came  into  Ballycullen 
past  the  police  barracks  he  felt  that,  step  by  step, 
was  he  coming  nearer  Dublin,  where  the  actuality 
of  all  the  singing  he  had  been  doing  for  so  many 
years  was  happening  now.  He  had  always  been 
well  received  by  the  people  of  this  place.  He 
would  frighten  hell  out  of  the  peelers  immedi- 
ately. .  .  ;<> 

The  first  door  at  which  he  stopped  was  that  of 
Marcus  Flynn.  Michael  came  out  and  gave 
him  sixpence  before  he  started  and  this  looked 
like  a  good  omen.  Marcus  heard  the  scrape  of 
the  fiddle,  as  he  sat  in  the  parlour  and  he  came 
out  of  the  shop  in  a  fierce  whet  of  temper.  It  was 


186     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

bad  enough  surely  to  have  all  the  worries  of  the 
devil  on  a  man's  mind,  without  having  this  lousy 
old  cur  coming  along  to  set  a  fellow  mad  alto- 
gether with  his  singing.  His  coming  almost 
made  itself  heard  to  Seumas,  who  was  blind,  so 
he  struggled  timidly  away  from  the  door.  In 
Thomas  Cooney's  a  crowd  of  men,  drinking  to 
ease  their  anxiety,  had  to  hold  one  another  from 
getting  at  him  when  he  came  in  to  ask  the  reward 
of  his  singing  of  "  Who  Fears  to  Speak  of  Ninety- 
Eight."  Thomas  himself,  thinking  it  safer  than 
to  have  a  ballad-singer  murdered  on  the  premises 
by  someone  who  was  after  taking  a  drop  too  much 
in  the  shop,  sent  up  to  the  barracks  for  the  ser- 
geant. But  rambling  Seumas,  out  of  the  rebel- 
lious mood  of  the  vagrant,  managed  to  bawl  out 
another  ferocious  song  before  the  whole  force  of 
twelve  peelers  moved  down  in  a  body  to  arrest 
him.  They  caught  him  and  broke  his  fiddle  into 
a  hundred  smithereens  and  kicked  him  down 
through  Ballycullen.  Out  of  his  mouth,  which 
was  all  bloody  from  their  blows,  he  went  on  bawl- 
ing songs  that  faded  into  silence  over  the  bog  like 
the  mournful  cries  of  sad  birds.  .  .  .  But  al- 
though the  plan  that  had  come  into  his  mind  of 
singing  proudly,  rebelliously,  all  the  road  to  Dub- 
lin had  been  broken,  thus  almost  at  its  inception, 
he  could  not  be  robbed  of  memory  of  the  songs 
which  enshrined  the  deeds  of  those  who  were 


EASTER  WEEK  1916  187 

gone.  .  .  .  And  there  might  be  songs  made 
about  those  who  were  dying  now  and  he  was  the 
man  would  sing  them.  He  drank  all  he  could  get 
in  the  wayside  pubs,  and  no  one  who  saw  a  blind, 
mad  ballad-singer  passing  along  the  roads  of 
Meath  and  roaring  wildly  felt  that  he  represented 
a  definite  climax  in  Irish  history.  .  .  . 

Back  in  Ballycullen  a  feeling  of  jubilation  was 
beginning  to  creep  in  triumphantly.  The  rebels 
were  after  being  beaten,  beaten  to  hell,  and  so  men 
were  returning  to  the  ancient  sense  of  security 
again.  They  knew  the  fierce  comfort  of  a  certain 
satisfaction,  too.  It  was  fine  to  think  of  the 
bloody-looking  idiots  that  were  after  getting  up  to 
destroy  the  country  being  bet  to  blazes.  A  grand- 
looking  lot  of  devils,  anyway,  with  English  names 
and  the  like,  that  nobody  ever  heard  of  before, 
and  the  whole  damned  lot  of  them,  maybe,  in  the 
pay  of  the  Government. 

A  paper  from  Belfast  had  somehow  managed 
to  get  to  Ballycullen,  and  this  gave  an  account  of 
how  O'Connell  Street  was  in  ruins,  and  the  back 
was  broken  in  the  rebellion.  The  Sinn  Feiners 
were  beaten  and  everyone  was  against  them  already 
because  they  were  beaten.  If  by  any  chance  they 
had  won,  a  great  many  must,  ere  now,  have  been 
making  political  somersaults  to  their  side.  But 
now,  because  they  had  failed,  it  was  "  the  curse  of 
hell  on  them."  "  Did  anyone  ever  hear  such  non- 


188      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

sense?  "  "  To  go  get  up  in  the  middle  of  the  war 
to  go  attack  what  protected  them  all  along  from 
the  hated  Hun!  "  "Traitors  to  their  brothers 
and  they  dying  for  them  beyond  in  France!  " 
"All  for  the  sake  of  Germany!  "  "The  dirty 
black  streak  breaking  out  in  the  Irish  even  at  the 
present  time!  "  "Rebellions  were  all  damn  fine 
long-ago,  but  it's  no  sort  of  work  to  be  doing  at 
the  present  time!  "  "Why,  begod,  you'd  think 
that  we  were  still  bloody  savages  in  the  heart  of 
Africa  ready  to  lep  at  one  another's  throat  when- 
ever we  feel  like  it!  "  "  Sure,  I  suppose  there  was 
nothing  only  Irish  chaps  in  the  regiments  they 
mowed  down  coming  in  from  Kingstown!  " 
"Home  Rule  is  finished  now  anyway!  "  "Poor 
John  Redmond,  it  will  go  to  his  heart!  ' 

The  May  Fair  had  come  but  it  had  not  been 
attended  by  any  dealers.  Neither  Alexander 
Waddell  nor  St.  John  Marlowe  had  been  there 
to  open  the  Bank.  This,  to  everyone  an  almost 
sacrilegious  breach  of  custom,  seemed  to  sum- 
marize and  signify  the  villainy  that  the  outburst 
had  been. 

"  Now  d'ye  see  what  the  rebellion  is  after  do- 
ing, and  d'ye  know  what  I'm  going  to  tell  you? 
Only  for  the  Government  we  wouldn't  have  the 
bit  to  put  in  our  mouths,  and  that's  God's  truth." 

Out  of  this  kind  of  talk  and  a  thick,  heavy 
silence  leaped  a  sense  of  gloom  and  disquieting 


EASTER  WEEK  1916  189 

foreboding  of  the  future.  In  Michael's  mind 
continuously  was  a  thought  that  had  sprung 
there  on  Easter  Monday  night  and  it  was  that 
the  period  which  stretched  from  the  General  Elec- 
tion of  1910  had  been  one  of  set  back  for  Sinn 
Fein,  and  that,  as  often  happens  in  a  country 
moving  nebulously  towards  Freedom,  the  destruc- 
tive element  had  been  all  this  while  moving  into 
the  ascendant. 

It  appeared  to  him  that  there  could  be  no  room 
in  a  country  like  Ireland  for  a  constitutional  and 
a  revolutionary  movement:  signifying  on  the 
one  hand  a  certain  dependence  upon  England, 
and  on  the  other  complete  independence.  Thus 
had  come  inevitably  this  conflict  between 
these  two  policies  through  the  universal  dis- 
turbance of  the  Great  War.  Ireland  had 
not  been  equal  to  the  travail  of  a  bloodless 
revolution  because  even  re-birth  must  begin  in 
blood.  .  .  , 

It  was  a  puzzling  feature  of  Michael's  mind  to 
see  how  intensely  sane  his  outlook  could  sometimes 
be,  and  his  reason,  too,  when  one  considered  the 
wild,  weedy  places  in  which  it  sought  its  food. 
It  was,  in  short,  a  mentality  bespeaking  a  certain 
political  culture  which  might  have  given  him  an 
honourable  standing  in  a  country  that,  unlike  Ire- 
land, had  not  been  poisoned  to  its  very  soul  by 
politics.  .  .  .  Thus  was  it  all  the  more  strange 


190      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

how  the  blood  of  him  could  be  always  so  easily 
fired  into  a  sentimental  regard. 

He  had  almost  become,  through  the  inner  con- 
solation, induced  by  outward  persecution  and  mis- 
understanding, now  fully  resigned  to  his  great 
betrayal  of  himself  by  his  absence  from  Dublin. 

One  evening  a  Dublin  paper  was  given  him  by 
Mirandolina.  It  contained  the  simple  announce- 
ment that  the  O'Rahilly  had  been  killed  in  Moore 
Street.  His  immediate  thought  had  one  touch  of 
the  colour  of  Ballycullen.  This  was  a  rich  man, 
they  said,  richer  than  anyone  in  Ballycullen,  and 
yet  he  thought  all  that  he  had  very  little  to  give  to 
Ireland.  .  .  .  This  news  plunged  him  into  a 
black,  bitter  mood  again,  and  Mirandolina  could 
get  no  good  of  him  at  all.  The  rebellion  and  all 
that  it  meant  to  him  now  made  an  immense,  leaden 
sadness. 

"Musha,"  she  said  petulantly,  at  last,  "why 
didn't  you  go  to  Dublin  and  be  done  with  it,  any- 
way?" 

He  broke  from  her  quietly  and  they  went  home 
by  different  ways.  .  .  .  In  the  days  which 
followed  his  little  room  seemed  to  call  him  again. 
They  were  beginning  to  shoot  the  leaders  now. . . . 
He  began  to  think  of  his  plan  for  a  rising  that 
he  had  burned.  The  Sergeant  came  more  often 
into  the  shop  to  warn  him  as  a  friend  that  it 
might  be  better  if  he  burned  any  incriminating 


EASTER  WEEK  1916  191 

literature  in  his  possession.  ...  It  seemed 
that  Ireland  was  again  to  be  thrown  back  one 
hundred  years.  And  he  was  going  with  it.  There 
was  really  nothing  in  his  little  room  now  which 
was  worth  keeping  in  defiance  of  the  advice  of 
the  Sergeant.  .  .  .  Oh,  God,  it  was  a  room  of 
agony  and  of  the  blindness  and  dumbness  of 
defeat. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

VICTORIES 

IRELAND  seemed  to  pass  now  into  one  of  the 
accustomed  states  of  drifting  futility, 
wherein  all  that  was  bravest  and  best  would 
seem  to  be  submerged  by  some  dark,  meaningless, 
muddy  flow.  The  flower  of  the  rebel  leaders  had 
been  long  in  the  grave,  and  Dillon  and  Devlin  were 
making  great  speeches  once  again.  Roger  Case- 
ment had  been  hanged  with  all  the  show  of  medi- 
aeval butchery  which  marked  the  killing  of  Robert 
Emmet  113  years  before.  In  all  that  long  century 
and  more  the  British  had  been  unable  to  shed  the 
beast  in  them.  Michael  was  left  to  snatch  some 
comfort  from  such  melancholy  relics  of  the  dead 
as  Thomas  McDonagh's  poem  of  "  The  Suicide  ": 

'*  Here  when  I  have  died, 

And  when  my  body  is  found, 
They  will  bury  it  by  the  roadside 
And  in  no  blessed  ground. 

And  no  one  my  story  will  tell, 

And  no  one  will  honour  my  name; 
They  will  think  that  they  bury  well 
The  damned  in  their  graves  of  shame. 
192 


VICTORIES  193 

But  alike  shall  be  at  last 

The  shamed  and  the  blessed  place, 

The  future  and  the  past, 

Man's  grace  and  man's  disgrace. 

Secure  in  my  grave  I  shall  be 

From  it  all  and  quiet  then, 
With  no  thought  and  no  memory 

Of  the  deeds  and  the  dooms  of  men." 

It  was  a  lonely  thing  to  remain  with  this  and 
with  picture  postcards  of  those  that  were  gone. . . . 
Soon,  however,  the  old  spirit  was  bursting  out  to 
the  light,  as  it  had  always  done  after  every  defeat, 
in  doleful  ballads.  "  Who  Fears  to  Speak  of 
Easter  Week?"  was  being  sung  with  such  a  wide- 
spread vehemence  as  to  claim  for  it  an  enkindling 
quality  greater  than  that  of  the  poor  parody  which 
it  was  of  a  finer  song  of  a  more  spacious  day.  It 
was  in  ten  thousand  throats  and  more  emphati- 
cally in  those  which  had  been  accustomed  to  dis- 
play their  vocal  powers  in  productions  out  of  the 
English  music-halls. 

The  general  round-up  which  was  going  on  now 
was  driving  even  the  most  degraded  shoneens  to 
make  some  sort  of  show.  Anyhow,  and  at  their 
worst,  the  cursed  Government  could  not  put  a 
whole  country  in  jail.  .  .  . 

Marcus  Flynn  and  Thomas  Cooney  were  very 
princes  of  political  dominion  in  Ballycullen  in 
these  days.  What  harm  could  a  few  idiots  sing- 


194      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

ing  songs  do  to  them  any  more  than  Rambling 
Seumas  that  the  peelers  had  kicked  forever  out  of 
Ballycullen.  No  one  from  Ballycullen  had  died 
for  Ireland.  Even  he  who  should  have  made  the 
great  atonement  for  this  place  had  not  died  and 
no  song  had  been  made  about  him.  He  was  still 
only  Michael  Dempsey,  the  shop-boy  in  Marcus 
Flynn's. 

All  through  this  period  he  was  meeting  Miran- 
dolina.  Her  sentimentality  was  being  captured 
gradually  by  the  overwhelming  impulse  of  the 
time.  She  continually  wore  little  ribbons  or 
badges  and  read  little  books  or  leaflets  in  memory 
of  and  in  sympathy  with  the  ideals  of  those  who 
were  dead.  Even  Thomas  Cooney  permitted  a 
display  of  such  sympathies  on  the  part  of  his  em- 
ployes, for  although  it  was  not  a  change  that 
pleased  him  he  saw  that  the  country  was  gradu- 
ally veering  round  to  this  side.  He  still  loudly 
asserted  his  allegiance  to  the  old  party  and 
the  old  cause  but  a  man  like  him  had  to 
manoeuvre  as  best  he  could  between  all  the  dam- 
nable twists  of  the  Irish  mind.  .  .  .  The 
commonsense  of  such  tactics  was  being  forced  on 
Marcus  Flynn,  too,  although  ever  since  the  rebel- 
lion he  had  been  moving  from  the  shop  to  the 
room,  saying  very  fiercely,  so  that  Michael  might 
hear: 

"  Where's    the    bloody    Sinn    Feiners    now? 


VICTORIES  195 

What?  Hah!  Explain!  .Where  the  hell  are 
they  now  —  I  say?" 

All  the  same  he  was  pleased  that  Michael  was 
a  Sinn  Feiner,  for  it  was  something  of  which  he 
could  take  business  advantage.  The  fact  that 
he  possessed  such  a  shop-boy,  and  Thomas  Cooney 
did  not,  appeared  as  something  in  the  nature  of 
a  personal,  not  to  say  a  political,  triumph.  It 
fully  flattered  his  opinion  of  himself. 

There  was  much  in  what  Michael  realised 
around  him  now  with  which  he  was  out  of  sym- 
pathy. He  felt  as  if  he  must  some  day  be 
driven  to  express  his  distaste  of  it.  There  was 
something  almost  heroic,  something  certainly 
appeared  a  more  intimate  part  of  his  militant 
being  which  he  felt  was  best  expressed  in  not 
being  at  one  with  the  collective  mind  that,  on 
matters  of  politics,  he  felt  must  be  always  wrong. 
After  all,  the  best  men  were  those  who  had  stood 
most  alone.  Parnell  had  been  greatly  alone  at 
the  end,  because  he  was  a  good  man. 

Mirandolina  was  not  pleased  that  he  should 
consistently  want  to  be  different.  Her  talk  was  al- 
ways crowded  with  significance.  There  now  was 
Seumas  McEvoy,  who  had  never  been  anything, 
but  who  already  had  seen  his  great  opportunity 
and  taken  it.  He  had  opened  a  little  shop  and  was 
already  doing  a  thriving  business  in  Sinn  Fein 
books,  Sinn  Fein  papers,  Sinn  Fein  Songs  and 


196     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

Sinn  Fein  badges.  There  seemed  to  be  a  hint  in 
this  that  Michael  should  have  done  something  of 
the  same  kind,  and,  had  he  done  so,  it  seemed  that 
she  must  have  come  into  more  love  for  him. 
In  her  eyes,  then,  he  would  have  been  some- 
thing like  a  Sinn  Feiner,  as  well  as  appearing 
more  of  a  man.  .  .  .  He  felt  inclined  to  have 
a  tiff  with  her  one  evening  when  her  words  went 
on  to  suggest  this  to  his  mind.  She  had  already 
hinted  that  she  was  growing  a  little  weary  of  her 
life  in  Thomas  Cooney's  and  there  was  a  curious, 
wistful,  intimate  note  of  regret  in  her  voice  when 
she  tried  to  tell  him  how  a  girl  fades  in  a  draper's 
shop  in  a  country  town.  . 

The  men  who  were  euphemistically  described 
as  "Prisoners  of  War"  came  out  of  jail  at 
Christmas,  and  this  might  be  said  to  mark  the 
beginning  of  the  new  political  period  when  the 
flood  of  eloquence  became  almost  as  torrential  as 
of  old.  The  Peace  Conference  had  replaced  the 
old  house  in  College  Green  as  the  Hy  Brazil  of 
Ireland.  The  truth,  in  the  nature  of  a  triumph 
to  a  great  many,  but  to  him  and  a  few  others  as 
something  more  nearly  akin  to  defeat,  was  that 
Sinn  Fein  had  become  a  political  party.  It 
would  seem  to  be  out  to  capture  the  country. 
Stalwart  Chairmen  of  County  and  District  Coun- 
cils who,  a  little  while  since,  had  been  hanging 
affectionately  to  the  coattails  of  John  Redmond, 


VICTORIES  197 

because  they  were  looking  for  jobs  on  behalf  of 
all  their  friends  to  the  most  distant  degree  of 
blood,  were  now  standing  up  in  the  face  of  the 
world  to  declare  their  advocacy  of  this  new  cause. 
The  might  of  Redmondism  had  of  a  sudden  be- 
come a  feeble,  defeated,  thing.  The  signs  were  so 
strongly  significant  to  any  fool  that  it  was  plain 
a  general  election  would  see  Sinn  Fein  sweeping 
the  country. 

The  antics  of  the  newspapers  were  certainly 
sufficient  to  excite  at  least  amusement.  Day  by 
Day  "  The  Freeman,"  slipping  further  and  fur- 
ther towards  a  deserved  damnation,  clutched  at 
straws  and  the  shadows  of  straws  drifting  with  it 
down  the  dark  tide  of  its  own  futility  in  desperate 
hopes  of  a  little  political  salvation.  "  The  Inde- 
pendent "  gave  the  widest  publicity  to  the  aspect 
of  victory  which  stood  for  this  defeat,  with  ap- 
parently no  other  aim  in  view  than  the  bringing 
of  heavy  sorrow  to  the  heart  of  "  The  Freeman." 
Although  its  tremendous  attitude  was  sufficient  to 
deceive  a  great  many,  Michael  could  see  that,  al- 
though the  flesh  of  "  The  Independent  "  was  will- 
ing the  spirit  was  weak.  "  The  Irish  Times,"  in 
its  heavy  concern  for  the  welfare  of  Ireland,  was, 
perhaps,  the  most  amusing  of  the  three,  since  the 
humour  shone  so  unconsciously  through  its 
ponderous  seriousness. 

The  election  of  Count  Plunkett  for  North  Ros- 


198      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

common  was  made  to  appear  an  event  of  more 
real  and  actual  importance  to  the  New  Ireland 
than  the  Rebellion  of  Easter  Week.  The  mind 
of  the  idealist  was  a  thing  difficult  of  understand- 
ing, but  to  "best"  another  man  even  thus  mag- 
nificently at  the  polls  was  in  intimate  relation  to 
the  game  they  were  always  playing  in  Ballycullen. 
Michael  cycled  to  Longford  and  from  meeting 
to  meeting  when  the  election  was  at  its  highest 
pitch  of  excitement  there.  In  the  conduct  of  the 
campaign  there  was  nothing  so  very  different 
from  all  that  he  remembered  of  a  fight  between  a 
Nationalist  and  an  Independent  Nationalist  in 
the  days  before  Sinn  Fein  had  dared  to  lift  its 
head.  The  staunchest  supporters  of  Joe  Mc- 
Guinness  had  once  been  staunch  supporters  after 
the  same  fashion  of  some  nominee  of  Redmond's. 
In  many  of  its  aspects  the  whole  thing  seemed 
little  more  than  a  determined  return  to  the  ancient 
factionism  with  which  his  country  had  been  so 
heavily  cursed.  Of  course,  there  was  an  attempt 
to  colour  with  the  merely  melodramatic  signifi- 
cance of  the  rebellion  this  small  fight  as  if  it  were 
for  this  and  this  only  that  Pearse  and  Connolly 
had  died.  .  .  .  As  a  sudden  illumination  Michael 
caught  a  glimpse  of  political  opportunists  of  both 
parties  secretively  drinking  hand  to  fist  in  an 
hotel  bar  in  Longford  town.  ...  He  carried 
this  with  him  back  all  the  road  to  Ballycullen  as 


VICTORIES  199 

an  impression  vastly  more  important  than  the 
feeling  created  by  the  spectacle  of  John  Dillon 
attempting  to  teach  the  young  priests  of  Ireland 
their  religion  from  a  penny  catechism.  .  .  . 
Surely  to  God  there  was  something  wrong  with 
his  country,  something  terrible  and  inexplicable 
which  boggled  his  intellect  as  he  tried  to  puzzle 
it  out.  There  sprang  into  his  mind  as  bits  of 
explanations  the  strangest  and  most  contradictory 
notions.  Yet  the  only  certainty  to  him  was  the 
conviction  that  the  winning  of  Ireland  at  the  polls 
could  never  be  more  than  what  the  journalists 
always  like  to  call  "  A  Phyrric  Victory." 

He  tried  to  explain  the  gathering  force  and 
direction  of  his  thoughts  at  this  juncture  to  Mi- 
randolina.  She  did  not  appear  very  anxious  to 
follow  his  reasoning.  Her  way  of  making  a 
show  of  her  political  convictions  was  by  spending 
a  good  deal  of  her  time  in  the  long  bright  even- 
ings chatting  about  Sinn  Fein  with  Seumas  Mc- 
Evoy  over  a  show  of  Sinn  Fein  merchandise.  .  .  . 

Then  came  the  East  Clare  Election  and  the 
sentimental  side  of  Michael  was  touched  once 
more  by  the  dashing  and  romantic  figure  of 
Eamonn  De  Valera.  It  seemed  that  this  man 
talked  differently,  and  might  he  not  be  the  very 
one  to  kindle  the  embers  of  the  nation  towards  the 
great  flame. 

So  influenced  was  he  by  the  tremendous  victory 


200     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

that  he  led  the  "James  Connolly"  Sinn  Fein 
club  through  the  street  of  Ballycullen  in  celebra- 
tion on  the  night  of  the  declaration  of  the  poll, 
and  everybody  cheered  madly,  with  the  exception 
of  Thomas  Cooney  and  Marcus  Flynn,  although 
their  shop-girl  and  shop-boy  were  in  the  crowd. 

He  went  to  see  Griffith  and  De  Valera  at  a 
meeting  in  Mullaghowen  a  few  Sundays  later  and 
was  keen  to  realise  the  poor  colour  of  the  mere 
frothings  which  ebbed  and  flowed  upon  the 
empty  cheers  around  them.  .  .  .  But  he  saw 
the  proud  head  of  De  Valera  and  heard  the  voice 
of  Griffith.  He  was  happier  than  for  many  a 
month,  and  Mirandolina  had  begun  to  meet  him 
more  often.  .  .  .In  fact,  there  seemed  to  be 
upon  her  the  very  same  anxiety  about  being  with 
him  that  she  had  shown  during  Easter  Week. 

There  came  many  a  moment  now  in  the  lonely 
room  in  his  mother's  house  when  he  tried  still  fur- 
ther to  puzzle  out  the  strange  mixture  of  contradic- 
tions that  Mirandolina  was,  and  the  stranger  mix- 
ture which  was  his  country.  Poor  Mirandolina 
Conway  and  poor  Dark  Rosaleen!  How  sad 
the  finest  love  that  ever  was  might  come  to  seem 
when  the  heart's  flame  is  quenched!  Love  of 
country,  love  of  woman.  It  would  be  all  the 
same  when  the  ending  came  and  the  fire  had  gone 
out. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

SINN   FEIN   AND   SOLUTION 

THERE  were  moments  in  its  history  when 
Ballycullen  appeared  to  be  situated  psycho- 
logically as  well  as  geographically  in  the 
very  middle  of  Ireland.  More  especially  now, 
when  the  tumult  which  had  begun  in  Clare  seemed 
to  boom  greatly  around  the  silence  of  this  place  in 
which  one  might  endeavour  to  realise  the  meaning 
of  the  encircling  sound.  It  often  seemed  almost  a 
part  of  all  beauty  and  wisdom  for  the  mind  of 
Michael  Dempsey  to  look  out  upon  the  world  from 
its  prison  in  Ballycullen  and  to  feel  his  country 
struggling  at  last  into  the  great,  pulsing  flow  of 
world  life.  Ireland,  it  would  almost  seem,  had 
begun  to  move  at  last  towards  some  lofty  destiny. 
The  Hamlet  of  the  nations  was  beginning  to 
throw  off  the  mantle  of  sadness  which  had  en- 
shrouded it  with  its  own  nature. 

It  often  seemed  very  strange  to  himself  that 
he  was  one  of  those  to  first  see  the  essential  truth 
which  might  eventually  shape  this  present  con- 
dition of  the  National  mentality.  Sinn  Fein  had 

201 


202      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

always  been  to  him  a  thing  of  splendour  and  im- 
mense importance  although  it  ignored  the  disturb- 
ing element  of  political  development  and  deter- 
mination by  the  accidental  circumstances  of  any 
unforeseen  moment,  and  this  was  the  most  im- 
portant political  factor  in  the  world  of  the  present. 
A  policy  created  upon  a  sense  of  the  past  was 
striving  desperately  to  adjust  itself  to  a  situation 
which  it  had  not  previously  studied,  for  the  situa- 
tion it  had  evolved  almost  treacherously  from  the 
feeble  human  breed  in  the  Ireland  of  the  time. 
Sinn  Fein,  it  would  seem,  had  managed  success- 
fully to  adjust  itself  to  the  moment,  because,  by  a 
curious  coincidence,  the  moment  itself  was  in  the 
melodramatic  tradition  of  the  past.  It  might  not 
be  able  to  adjust  itself  to  the  new  political  devel- 
opments which  must  arise  inevitably  out  of  the 
economic  realities  of  peace  conditions  with  their 
certain  monstrous  aspects  of  surprise.  Sinn  Fein 
and  the  present  had  always  appeared  curiously  an- 
tagonistic on  the  basis  of  any  reality,  and  com- 
pletely contradictory  in  terms  of  economics.  There 
were  moments  when  the  Rebellion,  with  all  its 
beauty  and  heroism,  seemed  a  wild  and  fruitless 
adventure.  The  calling  of  it  "  The  Sinn  Fein  Re- 
bellion "  was,  although  merely  a  journalistic  mis- 
take, in  reality,  more  deadly  to  the  real  Sinn  Fein 
spirit  than  the  guns  of  Maxwell.  But  continually 
it  appeared  not  so  much  was  it  what  had  ever 


SINN  FEIN  AND  SOLUTION      203 

been  said  or  done  that  mattered  now  as  the  force 
of  the  world  impulse  which  brutally  threatened 
the  very  soul  of  Ireland's  older  beauty.  Yet,  per- 
haps, the  increasing  tide  of  prosperity  was  what 
Ireland  had  been  struggling  for  through  every 
generation,  and  that  the  millennium  had  at  last 
come  to  Ireland.  Home  Rule  and  every  other 
dream  had  been  realised  in  one  great  crash  of 
poetic  justice. 

For  the  first  time  had  been  fully  translated  into 
action  the  idea  that  it  is  not  its  form  of  Govern- 
ment which  controls  a  nation,  but  the  supremacy 
of  its  own  will.  It  was  the  interpretation  of  "  our- 
selves alone  "  by  Sinn  Fein,  but  this  interpretation 
would  seem  to  have  been  intended  only  in  relation 
to  things  of  the  spirit,  and  was  surely  never  meant 
to  signify  the  uncharitableness  of  vulgar,  shoving 
individuals  and  groups  who  believed  in  getting 
everything  for  themselves  alone  and  to  hell,  as 
they  felt  and  said,  with  everybody  else.  It  stood 
for  self-reliance,  self-respect,  charity,  common 
decency,  comradeship,  and  now  this  other  reality, 
so  painfully  manifest,  was  the  negation  of  all 
these  things.  The  very  heart  of  Ireland  had  al- 
ready begun  to  be  decayed  by  the  pride  of  pros- 
perity until  now  it  was  rotten  almost  to  the  core. 
Michael's  mind  was,  of  course,  reasoning  with 
regard  to  the  agricultural  population.  The  real 
Sinn  Fein  spirit  might  survive  still  clean  in  the 


204     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

cities,  but  always,  from  where  he  stood  watching, 
he  fancied  that  he  was  nearer  the  forces  of  life 
which  caused  the  colour  and  expression  of  his 
nationality.  .  .  .  But  could  anyone  have 
dreamt  that  the  profits  made  out  of  England's 
war  might  have  such  a  subtle  power  to  destroy 
this,  the  cleanest  thing  he  had  ever  known.  Even 
the  ostentatious  bursting  of  young  men  into  vari- 
ous acts  of  rebellion  all  over  the  country  was,  in 
reality,  a  denial  of  the  same  beauty.  To  put  it 
very  plainly,  indeed,  the  whole  thing  appeared  as 
the  "  letting  off  of  so  much  steam."  The  men  who 
had  fought  for  the  land  and  "  the  fill  of  their 
bellies  "  in  the  "  eighties  "  had  been  better  men 
and,  in  reality,  nearer  to  spirituality  than  all  those 
who  prated  so  glibly  of  an  Irish  Republic.  And 
even  at  the  beginning  of  the  succeeding  dark, 
futile  period  there  were  men  who  had  endured 
more  for  love  of  Parnell  than  a  great  many  of 
the  present  breed  were  likely  to  endure  for  Arthur 
Griffith  or  De  Valera.  And  what  was  all  fighting 
worth  if  men  did  not  stand  to  the  last  by  their 
captain  or  their  king?  The  poor,  dwindled, 
blithering  figure  of  John  Redmond  was  something 
calculated  rather  to  excite  pity  than  the  oppro- 
brium embodied  in  all  the  mean  scurrility  which 
had  dragged  down  his  name  in  the  dust. 

The  men  with  the  real  spirit  in  them  could  not 
be  said  to  truly  represent  Ireland  any  more  than 


SINN  FEIN  AND  SOLUTION      205 

Michael  at  any  period  of  his  life  could  be  said 
truly  to  represent  Ballycullen.  Looking  out  from 
Ballycullen  over  Ireland,  one  saw  it  more  clearly 
than  if  one  looked  out  from  Dublin  over  Ireland. 
There  seemed  urgent  need  that  the  gathering 
pride  of  Ballycullen  should  be  humbled,  for  Ire- 
land was  nothing  more  than  a  bigger  Ballycullen, 
and  it  is  through  suffering  only  that  National  sal- 
vation may  be  won. 

Continually  some  orator  or  another  of  Sinn 
Fein  was  asserting  that  the  whole  system  of  Im- 
perialism in  Ireland  had  broken  down.  It  was 
something  which  Ireland  had  not  achieved  until 
now,  but  Ireland  also  had  achieved  the  assump- 
tion of  some  alien  quality,  some  brutality  of  mind 
shaping  towards  a  certain  tyranny  which  was,  in 
reality,  a  negation  of  Sinn  Fein,  in  fact  of  the 
very  basic  principle  of  Irish  Nationality,  for  it 
made  for  intellectual  subjection,  the  worst  slavery 
of  all.  Ireland  had  not  suffered  through  the  war. 
In  fact,  quite  the  opposite.  How  many  hundred 
times  had  Michael  heard  farmers  say  in  the 
shop: 

"  Well,  thanks  be  to  God,  but  be  hell  this  war 
is  after  making  up  the  country,  and  damn  the  lie 
in  it!  " 

There  might  be  war  profiteers  in  other  coun- 
tries, yet  in  those  places,  too,  the  men  who  had 
fought  did  not  return  like  aliens,  but  as  honoured 


206     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

men.  Bad  as  certain  social  conditions  might  be, 
it  was  scarcely  thus  they  were  talking  of  their  own 
countrymen  in  other  lands. 

"  Sure,  they'll  get  no  job.  They'll  get  no  land. 
They'll  get  nothing.  Why,  begod,  weren't  they 
awful  bloody-looking  idiots  to  go  out  and  fight 
for  England.  What  will  England  do  for  them 
now?  " 

What  could  England  do?  Had  not  the  whole 
system  of  Imperialism  in  Ireland  broken  down? 
Those  who  had  struck  at  the  foundations  of  guilt 
were,  for  all  that  the  young  men  of  Ireland  were 
wearing  celluloid  badges  of  them  in  their  but- 
tonholes and  singing  their  names  in  songs,  ac- 
counted pretty  much  as  these  others  who  had 
fought.  They  were  all  bloody  fools.  If  a  large 
proportion  of  the  farming  population  of  Ireland 
had  subscribed  to  the  National  Aid  Fund,  was  it 
not  the  best  way  just  presently  open  of  showing 
off  the  money  they  had  made  in  the  second  and 
succeeding  years  of  the  War? 

It  was  not  that  Michael  really  begrudged  them 
their  prosperity,  but  he  would  welcome  anything 
which  might  make  them  worthy.  He  longed  to 
think  that,  at  last,  something  might  make  them 
sincere.  Sinn  Fein  was  almost  altogether  politics 
now  and  there  was  nothing  needed  but  a  general 
election  to  effect  its  complete  substitution  in 
everything  for  the  vanishing  Irish  Party.  There 


SINN  FEIN  AND  SOLUTION      207 

was  no  promise  of  suffering  in  this  unless,  perhaps, 
the  certainty  of  decline  and  ultimate  defeat  to 
complete  the  analogy  which  was  a  natural  expec- 
tation in  consideration  of  something  relying  for 
its  existence  upon  anything  so  shadowy  as  the 
votes  of  men. 

Connor  Carberry !  There  now  was  a  man  who 
had  surely  suffered  sufficiently,  one  would  be 
driven  to  think,  for  his  face  looked  almost  as  if 
it  had  been  scarred  by  fiery  knives,  leaping  almost 
murderously  out  of  his  own  brain.  And  still, 
when  Michael  felt  puzzled  almost  to  distraction 
by  all  the  ethical  and  political  subtleties  of  his 
native  country,  he  sought  an  answer  and  still 
found  it  in  the  same  hopeless  contact  with  this 
spent  fire  of  ancient  rages.  It  was  sad,  even  as 
one  talked  to  him,  to  see  this  old  man,  driven  to 
suffer  so  much  by  the  present,  while  he  still  talked 
so  bravely  of  the  days  of  old.  His  rheumy  eyes 
seemed  to  be  always  full  of  the  vision  of  a  green 
flag  with  a  gold  harp  on  it  forever  flapping 
mournfully  over  those  who  were  dead  and  gone. 
In  life  he  counted  for  nothing  at  all,  while  his 
mind  did  not  possess  the  full  emancipation  of  the 
dreamer.  .  .  .  The  cost  of  the  accessories  of 
his  craft  as  hedge-carpenter  had  risen  so  consid- 
erably that  scarcely  anyone  ever  employed  him 
now.  He  had  refused  to  accept  the  pension,  for 
was  he  not  a  proud,  Fenian  man? 


208      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

There  were  times  when  Michael,  thinking  he 
was  hungry,  would  bring  him  some  biscuits  and 
cheese  from  the  shop.  Yet  he  never  complained 
or  made  a  request,  for  he  was  one  of  those  in 
whom  the  powers  of  the  mind  were  almost  suffi- 
cient to  triumph  over  the  hungers  of  the  body.  . . . 
On  the  morrow  of  a  night  he  would  have  spent 
with  Connor  Carberry  there  would  be  a  quiet, 
empty  feeling  in  Michael's  heart  as  if  something 
had  been  burned  away  by  so  wild  passion  of  that 
lonely,  broken  man.  .  .  . 

It  was  infinitely  laborious,  even  physically,  to 
be  always  striving  to  find  an  answer  to  the  ques- 
tions which  interrogated  his  very  soul.  It  was 
little  wonder,  he  thought  frequently,  that  Miran- 
dolina  had  again  turned  from  him  to  swing  her 
comely  personality  midway  between  two  such 
contrasted  gallants  as  Ambrose  Donohue,  who 
had  put  on  the  uniform  of  the  king,  and  Seumas 
McEvoy,  who  was  making  a  nice  little  penny  out 
of  the  memory  of  the  dead.  He  did  not  possess 
the  courage  of  his  lack  of  convictions.  He  was 
always  torturing  himself  with  grey-questioning, 
although  there  had  been  a  time  when  the  rich 
purpose  of  his  mind  had  been  as  clear  as  amber. 
How  queerly  all  things  could  turn?  There 
seemed  to  be  such  an  unaccountable  twist  in 
human  nature,  which,  in  its  most  tragic  moments, 
became  almost  comic.  How  things  were  swung 


SINN  FEIN  AND  SOLUTION      209 

so  swiftly  out  of  what  would  appear  as  their  ap- 
pointed courses,  so  that  one  could  never  tell  but 
that  even  some  wise,  great  plan  of  a  politician 
might  come  to  appear  as  the  most  benighted 
foolery  in  the  end. 

Above  all  others  came  crushingly  his  thought 
of  Mirandolina,  to  whom  he,  at  a  time  not  so  far 
back,  had  spoken  of  Robert  Emmet  and  his  dream 
of  Ireland.  She  had  gone  walking  with  a  British 
Officer,  "  a  temporary  gent,"  as  he  would  now  be 
described  in  the  comic  papers  which  had  gone 
to  create  him.  It  might  be  that  it  was  the  martial 
gladness  of  Ambrose  that  had  snatched  her  from 
him.  .  .  .  Perhaps,  he  thought,  as  they  had 
gone  walking  around  Ballycullen,  Ambrose  had 
talked  of  dying  for  Ireland,  too,  and  maybe  she 
had  believed  him. 

Yet,  through  power  of  the  feeling  which  had 
arisen  in  the  country,  Ambrose  was  either  afraid 
or  ashamed  to  come  back  to  show  himself  off  in 
Ballycullen  now.  The  uniform  he  wore  was  no 
longer  an  appendage  to  adoration,  and  it  consti- 
tuted a  further  exemplification  of  the  queerness  of 
all  things  that  this,  a  man  who  had  always  been 
sufficiently  clever  to  adjust  himself,  could  evi- 
dently think  of  no  compromise  between  his  pres- 
ent position  and  the  present  way  of  things  in  Ire- 
land. 

Now  it  was  Seumas  McEvoy  who  was  gallantly 


210     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

gesticulating  before  the  poor  little  mind  of  Mi- 
randolina,  the  talk  of  him  wholly  inspired  by 
seditious  Sinn  Fein  literature  and  all  narrowing 
down  to  the  final  declaration  of  intention  of  dy- 
ing for  Ireland,  a  small  sandy  young  man  stand- 
ing behind  his  own  counter,  his  chest  decorated 
by  a  number  of  medals  which  he  had  won  from 
the  G.  A.  A.  hung  on  his  watch-chain,  and  just 
presently  making  a  good  living  by  selling  Sinn 
Fein  merchandise.  He  was  rapidly  taking  the 
place  left  vacant  by  the  regrettable  departure  of 
Ambrose  Donohue  from  the  midst  of  Ballycullen. 
He  was  an  authority  upon  every  variation  of  the 
moment,  every  arrest,  every  sentence,  every  Grat- 
tan-like  gesture  of  a  leader,  every  "  dirty  move  " 
of  the  poor  old  Irish  party. 

Although  Michael  often  dropped  in  for  a  chat 
with  him  he  was  at  no  time  vastly  impressed  by 
the  personality  or  purpose  of  Seumas  McEvoy. 
In  occasional  moments  he  thought  it  sad  that 
it  was  to  this  man  that  his  girl  was  now  speaking. 
The  riddle  of  Ireland  and  Mirandolina  seemed  to 
shape  itself  by  degrees  into  a  darker  complexity. 

There  was  only  one  place  where  it  seemed  re- 
flected, although  darkly  as  in  a  black  pool,  and 
this  was  in  the  sodden  mind  of  Kevin  Shanaghan. 
One  night  they  had  a  memorable  meeting.  It  ap- 
peared almost  as  the  encounter  on  a  rocky  ledge 
of  their  hell  of  two  tortured  spirits  destined  in  this 


SINN  FEIN  AND  SOLUTION      211 

moment  to  commingle  as  flickers  of  flame,  the 
strongest  to  leap  high  with  the  other  absorbed 
through  the  more  powerful  impression  it  had 
made.  Michael  saw,  in  this  stark  instant,  that 
Kevin  Shanaghan  was  in  the  concluding  stage  of 
his  life  as  a  drunkard.  Even  now  it  was  in  the 
hurried,  nervous  manner  of  a  dipsomaniac  that 
he  had  caught  his  arm.  .  .  .  The  war  had 
left  the  mark  of  the  beast  even  still  further  im- 
pressed upon  this  sad  man.  There  had  been  huge 
quantities  of  drink  stirring  around  Ballycullen 
for  the  past  three  years.  He  was  laughing 
emptily,  foolishly,  his  face  darkly  smeared  with 
dirty  beard  and  his  eyes  goggled  into  what  at 
first  appeared  an  idiotic  stare. 

"  Michaeleen,  and  how  are  you?  I'm  grand 
myself.  Great,  as  the  saying  is,  great.  But  d'ye 
know  what  they're  calling  me  now?  Begad, 
they're  calling  me  'The  Comic.'  Isn't  that  a 
develish  name  anyway  to  be  giving  a  man  of  intel- 
lect, making  him  all  as  one  as  a  circus  clown,  mak- 
ing even  the  flesh  and  blood  of  him  a  kind  of  jeer, 
and  he  walking  around  on  his  four  bones?  And 
it's  not  even  as  if  I  was  making  a  living  out  of 
it,  like  a  common  whore.  Did  you  ever  hear  the 
idiots  talking  about  the  stars  and  they  half  drunk? 
Did  you  ever  hear  what  they  call  a  comet,  the 
lovely  burning  hair  of  a  woman  and  it  splashing 
golden  across  the  skies?  Well,  they  call  that  '  a 


212     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

comic '  too,  the  dirty  dobs.  So,  you  see,  this  night 
of  Our  Lord  there's  a  comic  on  the  earth  and 
there's  a  comic  in  the  sky,  myself  begod,  and  some 
lonely  angel's  golden  hair.  We're  comics,  God 
help  us,  myself  and  all  that  splash  of  glory,  to  the 
louts  that  come  into  Ballycullen  in  their  dirty 
brogues  to  look  for  porter.  .  ,  .  But  Mich- 
aeleen,  sure  the  comic  going  through  the  sky  is 
not  a  woman's  golden  hair  at  all,  but  the  colour 
of  God's  anger  when  the  Almighty  Man  would 
like  to  spit  upon  the  world.  I  often  wonder  that 
it  doesn't  drive  him  mad  entirely.  It  was  a  queer 
thing  out  of  God's  anger,  too,  mebbe  that  left  me 
seeing  them  as  I  do  now.  It  was  for  sake  of  them 
I  suffered,  for  sake  of  them  I  was  jailed,  for  sake 
of  them  I  lost  my  land.  It  was  not  until  I  fell 
down  as  far  as  I  am  now  that  I  saw  them.  Then 
I  became  odious  wise,  a  fool,  mebbe,  for  the  world 
to  see,  but  in  the  very  middle  of  my  mind  as  wise 
as  seven  old  men.  I  got  to  be  not  a  bit  like  an 
Irishman.  Why,  begod,  I  was  more  like  a  Jap  or 
a  Chinaman,  or  a  wise,  godly  man  of  India.  I 
saw  everything.  I  heard  everything.  I  got  to 
know  everything.  I  was  often  not  at  all  sur- 
prised to  hear  myself  saying  everything,  for  you 
must  remember  that  I  frequently  spoke  off  the 
one  platform  with  Michael  Davitt  and  Charles 
Stewart  Parnell.  I  wanted  to  destroy  the  me  that 
they  had  once  seen  until  I  had  rehabilitated  my 


SINN  FEIN  AND  SOLUTION      213 

intellect  as  that  of  the  most  wonderful  statesman 
that  the  world  had  ever  seen.  I  suppose  that  no 
one  ever  thought,  and  I  leaning  half  drunk  over 
some  counter,  that  my  mind  was  working  with 
the  speed  of  a  Lloyd  George  or  an  Asquith  and 
they  holding  a  Cabinet  meeting  or  taking  Mr. 
Dillon  or  Mr.  Devlin  off  to  breakfast  in  Down- 
ing Street.  I  used  often  see  a  scrap  of  an  Eng- 
lish paper  wrapped  round  a  bottle  that  I'd  be 
taking  away  with  me  for  the  night  when  I'd  spot 
the  account  of  some  English  journalist  sent  over 
here  to  study  the  question  at  first  hand  and  it 
would  make  me  think  of  the  correctness  of 
Shakespeare's  saying,  'Lord,  what  fools  these 
mortals  be !  '  meaning,  of  course,  the  British.  Isn't 
it  damned  curious  that  none  of  them  ever  found 
out  me  to  tell  what  I  know,  and  I  dying  to  tell?" 

Michael  was  almost  grown  tired  of  the  inco- 
herent outburst.  The  madness  of  drink  was  upon 
this  poor,  neglected,  almost  outcast  man.  It  was 
sadder  than  any  sadness,  blinder  than  any  blind- 
ness. .  .  .  And  he  was  clutching  him  again, 
his  eyes  looking  wild  yet  not  emptied  of  their 
strange  light. 

"  I  know,"  he  said,  with  something  different 
and  calm  returned  to  his  voice.  "  It's  not  Sinn 
Fein,  it's  not  Unionism,  it's  not  even  Constitu- 
tional Nationalism." 


214      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

"  It's  nothing  at  all,  I  suppose,"  said  Michael 
laughing. 

Although  he  really  did  not  mean  to  be  unkind, 
the  laugh  seemed  to  hurt  Kevin,  whose  talk  now 
turned  perfectly  sane.  It  was  filled  with  a  re- 
proach that  sounded  almost  noble. 

"  I  never  laughed  at  you,  Michaeleen,  all  the 
long  days  I  was  surprised  and  delighted  to  see 
that  you  had  in  you  the  seed  and  the  roots  of  the 
idea  I  thought  was  going  to  bring  joy  *  to  the 
heart  of  Kathleen-ni-Houlihan'  as  the  fellow  said 
in  the  play.  Nor  I  wouldn't  laugh  at  you  now, 
even  though  all  you  dreamt  about  is  dead  and 
gone,  all  killed  and  bet  and  murdered.  But  you 
wouldn't  laugh  if  I  told  you  of  my  plan,  that's  so 
simple  and  so  natural,  why  a  child  could  work  it. 
I'm  not  going  to  tell  you  what  it  is,  but  to  begin 
with  it  would  mean  converting  the  Irish  People 
back  to  Christianity.  As  long  as  the  British  were 
really  keeping  them  down,  there  was  comrade- 
ship and  charity  in  this  country.  I  do  be  often 
afraid  to  think  what  it  might  have  come  to  only 
for  the  civilising  influence  of  the  British." 

There  was  no  subtle,  Swift-like  irony  in  this, 
although  it  possibly  possessed  a  glimmer  of  fine 
wisdom  that  had  come  through  suffering  and 
degradation.  It  seemed  the  oldest  thought  in  the 
world,  yet  had  it  a  new  and  surprising  appeal  for 
this  poor,  disillusioned  man.  It  embodied  some 


SINN  FEIN  AND  SOLUTION      215 

ray  of  relief  across  the  travail  of  his  mind.  The 
light  upon  his  face  grew  brighter  as  he  spoke 
again. 

"  And  musha,  Michaeleen,  what  kind  of  an 
infernal  hell  would  we  have  in  this  country  if  we 
suddenly  arrived  at  a  Republic  with  the  party 
that's  in  power  at  the  present  time  jumping  into 
all  the  Government  jobs  ?  Why,  begod,  it  would 
be  far  worse  than  the  persecution  of  the  Penal 
Days  for  th'  other  party." 

There  was  a  sudden  glimmer  of  truth  to 
Michael  even  in  this  wild  exaggeration. 

"And  so  it  must  always  be,  for  there's  a  dam- 
nable kink  in  us,  an  element  of  the  traitor  break- 
ing out  every  time  because  we  all  think  we're  great 
fellows.  What  the  hell,  I  ask  you,  could  Redmond 
do  when  the  very  thing  that  killed  him  is  out 
to  kill  Sinn  Fein  as  well.  What  we  want  is  some- 
thing to  level  our  pride  and  I  wouldn't  care  a 
damn  what  it  was  so  long  as  it  levelled  that. 
But  I'm  not  relying  on  the  brains  of  anyone  else, 
,for  I  have  a  lovely  plan  of  my  own  that  would 
do  your  heart  good  to  hear." 

Now  it  was  Michael's  turn  to  become  suddenly 
wise,  and  to  win  a  flash  of  gladness  to  his  mind 
in  a  moment  of  intense  clearness.  This  had 
been  the  way  of  it  always.  How  many  unfortu- 
nate men  had  thought  that  they  had  struck  upon 
a  way?  All  of  them  had  dreamt,  for  something  in 


the  very  air  of  Ireland  had  filled  their  heads  with 
dreams.  It  was  the  same  in  the  case  of  the  true 
man  as  in  that  of  the  traitor,  with  him  who  had 
rotted  in  jail  and  with  him  who  had  supped  in 
Dublin  Castle.  It  had  evaded  all  of  them  so  that 
their  lives  had  left  nothing  of  reality  behind 
them.  Even  the  mere  thought  of  it  stirred  the 
mud  of  futility  in  one's  mind  still.  Here  now 
was  Kevin  Shanaghan,  who  must  presently  ask 
the  price  of  a  pint,  a  man  that  could  still  go  about 
with  his  head  encircled  by  the  stars  of  his  dream, 
although  his  patriotism  had  broken  him.  And 
Michael,  too,  although  the  certain  traitorous  ele- 
ment in  Ireland  itself  had  been  continually  felt 
by  him  in  its  full  power,  in  its  true  significance  or 
form  he  could  make  no  attempt  to  define  it.  They 
were  both  strange  "  comics  "  falling  ever  through 
the  same  crowd  of  stars. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  MATERIAL  DEFENCE 

EVER  since  he  had  burned  his  plans  for  the 
invincible  rising,  the  mind  of  Michael, 
through  many  such  little  encounters  and 
adventures,  had  been  approaching  nearer  and 
nearer  to  reality.  But  the  faith  in  which  he  had 
once  believed  so  greatly  had  not  yet  gone  down  de- 
feated. There  was  Ballycullen  always  such  a  stark 
reminder  of  the  meaner  significance  of  his  country, 
but  surely  the  last  deluge  of  blood  had  not  been  in 
vain.  This  hope  was  the  white  rose  which  sprung 
out  of  the  earth  so  richly  sprinkled  by  that  dew. 
It  almost  seemed  that  he  might  have  his  right- 
ful place  now  in  the  life  of  Ballycullen,  for  which 
he  had  so  fiercely  longed  for  but  a  little  while  since. 
All  the  young  men  seemed  anxious  to  talk  in  the 
evenings  of  things  they  had  just  read  in  "  Nation- 
ality" or  "New  Ireland"  or  "The  Irishman." 
They  were  continually  speaking  with  perfect  fa- 
miliarity, too,  of  the  sentences  upon  lesser  or 
greater  men,  of  men  in  jail  and  of  men  on  the  run. 
A  portion  of  their  conversation,  too,  consisted  in 

217 


218      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

the  expression  of  an  almost  savage  satisfaction 
when  it  would  appear  that  the  British  casualty  lists 
were  on  the  increase.  Marcus  Flynn  gave  his  silent 
consent  to  such  prating  for  business  purposes  in 
his  shop,  because  was  not  his  rival  in  all  things, 
Thomas  Cooney,  making  a  speciality  of  selling 
material  for  Republican  flags  in  his  "drapery?" 
Neither  had  much  blame  to  give  out  for  they 
were  both  doing  very  well,  but  both  were  vexed 
that  they  had  been  plucked  away  from  a  regular 
course  of  prosperity  to  perhaps  a  better  way,  but 
one  which  required  an  adjustment  of  their  an- 
cient political  prejudices.  Heretofore  their  minds 
had  only  been  called  upon  to  deal  with  little 
things,  while  now  they  were  expected  to  maintain 
some  show  of  personality  in  the  biggest  epoch 
that  the  world  had  ever  seen.  Often  it  would 
appear  to  their  mean,  stuttering  intellects  that  the 
war  might  never  end  and  that  in  some  desperate 
Fee-Faw-fum-like  or  Jack  the  Ripper  way  the 
Germans  must  eventually  destroy  all  before  them. 
Cowardice  is  ever  contagious  and  so  now  there 
was  not  a  man  of  military  age  in  Ballycullen  but 
was  a  mad  Sinn  Feiner.  This  kind  of  Sinn 
Feinery  stood  for  volunteering  again.  There  was 
less  display  of  military  pride,  because  there  was 
more  fear  than  fun  in  these  soldiers  of  Ireland 
who  had  sprung  queerly  out  of  a  troubled  time. 
The  officers  were  all  disguised  as  privates  and 


THE  MATERIAL  DEFENCE        219 

securely  hidden  in  the  ranks.  Captain  Beaumont 
Fortescue  and  the  Hon  Herbert  Fitzherbert  were 
notable  absentees  from  the  crowd  of  supporters. 
There  could  be  no  great  meeting  now  and  so  a 
source  of  advertisement  and  power  had  been 
snatched  from  the  hands  of  the  gombeen-men  of 
Ballycullen.  Although  he  did  not  desire  it  at  all, 
because  he  was  not  wholly  in  sympathy  with  the 
causes  which  determined  it,  Michael  was  now  of 
more  importance  in  the  shop  than  Marcus  his 
master.  The  distinction  would  seem  to  have 
arisen  quite  spontaneously,  and  if  the  war,  so  far, 
had  wrought  no  good  thing,  this  surely,  in  its  es- 
sence held  promise,  perhaps,  of  good  things  to  be. 
It  was  something  in  the  nature  of  the  end  of  the 
world,  this  sudden  discovery  that,  at  last,  money 
and  political  influence  were  not  able  to  purchase 
everything  on  God's  earth,  or  save  from  disaster 
akin  to  death.  But,  although  barely  able  to  smother 
their  tempers,  the  old  men  were  not  without  some 
watchfulness  for  their  chance  of  power  again. 

And  as  developments  daily  grew  more  serious, 
the  young  men  seemed  to  cling  naturally  to 
Michael  as  their  leader.  Theirs  was  neither 
election  nor  selection;  it  was  just  the  crying  need 
of  the  moment  that  compelled  them  to  seek  him. 
Day  by  day  the  young  man  seemed  further 
afflicted  by  panic  and  filled  with  the  hopes  that 
it  was  he  alone  could  save  them  and  there  were 


220     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

many  fathers  and  mothers  who  felt  that  it  was 
he  alone  could  preserve  their  lads  to  them. 
"  Marcus  Flynn's  "  was,  consequently,  flourishing 
beyond  any  place  in  Ballycullen,  and  so  Marcus 
himself  could  afford  to  sneer  loudly  at  Thomas 
Cooney  in  satisfaction  of  his  spitefulness  when- 
ever they  met  in  the  street,  for  their  wonderful 
unity  had  broken  down  with  the  breaking  up  of 
the  National  Volunteers. 

It  grew  upon  Thomas  that  in  keeping  Michael 
on  so  long  in  the  shop  despite  his  unpopularity 
through  inability  to  hit  off  with  the  people  upon 
points  of  Nationality,  until  the  fashion  in  politics 
had  veered  round  so  completely  in  favour  of  the 
brat,  Marcus  had  effected  a  remarkable  business 
score  over  himself.  The  continual  torture  of  it 
drove  him  to  think  of  Michael  as  the  greatest 
enemy  he  had  in  the  world  and  he  felt  that  he 
would  stop  at  nothing  to  bring  down  the  cur  and 
drive  him  out  of  Ballycullen.  The  only  thing 
which  saved  his  mind  from  almost  certain  de- 
fection was  his  shrewdness  in  awaiting  his  op- 
portunity. ...  It  should  come.  .  .  .  Money 
was  still  not  without  some  power  in  the  world. 
.  .  .  Despite  all  the  big  talk  about  a  new  heaven 
and  a  new  earth  the  heart  of  mankind  was  still 
largely  unchanged.  .  .  . 

The  gathering  protections  of  common  sense 
about  Michael's  mind  had  been  suddenly  torn 


THE  MATERIAL  DEFENCE       221 

away.  His  view-point  had  again  been  pushed  out 
of  balance  until  it  was  again  lop-sided  in  its  in- 
clusion of  the  melodramatic.  The  British  were 
being  hard-pressed  in  France.  This  overshadow- 
ing reality  seemed  to  make  many  other  things 
unreal.  ...  In  the  momentary  submerg- 
ence of  certain  elements  he  saw  only  the  defeat  of 
those  elements.  Perhaps  he  had  been  mistaken, 
and  that  Sinn  Fein  had  won  to  final  triumph 
after  all;  and  upon  these  sure  foundations  he 
might  rebuild  his  dream  even  here  in  Ballycullen. 
There  was  a  revival  of  Volunteering  but  it  was 
very  different  from  the  old  style.  There  was  now 
no  open  marching,  no  degrading  parades  from 
pub  to  pub.  The  miracle  of  a  return  to  real  Fe- 
nianism  had  been  effected  and  drilling  by  night  in 
dark  quiet  places  was  the  order  of  the  moment. 
There  was  much  wild  talk  of  taking  to  the  hills 
and  being  put  upon  their  keeping.  There  was 
much  fortification  of  themselves  to  endure  the 
privations  of  military  service  in  the  hope  of  de- 
feating their  obligations  to  military  service.  It 
was  surely  a  comical  stage-Irish  situation.  But 
there  was  no  doubt  that  they  would  fight  and 
though  there  were  moments  when  Michael  was 
still  forced  to  see  this  certitude  not  as  the  result 
of  courage  but  rather  as  the  inevitable  outcome  of 
cowardice,  it  was  none  the  less  real  as  a  circum- 
stance of  their  lives  because  its  greater  reality  was 


222      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

the  whole  soul  of  him.  .  .  .  He  saw  a  tre- 
mendous army  rising  in  brigades  and  battalions 
all  over  Ireland  at  the  command  of  Eamonn  De 
Valera.  He  saw  the  English  with  their  backs  to 
the  wall ;  he  saw  them  finally  being  kicked  into  the 
Irish  Sea.  The  Empire  was  down  and  out. 
There  was  not  a  Sinn  Fein  orator  or  a  Sinn  Fein 
journalist  within  the  four  seas  of  Ireland  who  did 
not  loudly  assert  as  much.  "  The  Irish  Independ- 
ent" was  very  determined  in  its  pronouncement. 
The  solid  determination  of  the  Irish  people,  etc., 

etc. 

******** 

The  national  pledge  to  resist  conscription  to  the 
death  was  to  be  signed  in  Ballycullen  next  Sun- 
day, and  a  Defence  Committee  elected  to  admin- 
ister the  money  which  would  be  subscribed  to  the 
Anti-Conscription  Fund.  So  far,  there  was  noth- 
ing political  about  the  widespread  "  determina- 
tion," but  Michael  seemed  to  glimpse  subcon- 
sciously an  approaching  attempt  to  administer 
some  of  the  old  political  poison.  Already  many 
of  the  murderous  emissaries  of  the  old  game  had 
stolen  by  back  doors  into  Sinn  Fein. 

Everything  went  to  show  that  he  was  very  near, 
at  last,  to  the  fateful  crisis  of  his  lifetime,  out  of 
which  he  might  spring  to  some  power  for  great 
good  even  in  this  place.  His  very  soul  was 
mobilising  itself  to  a  final  effort. 


THE  MATERIAL  DEFENCE        223 

As  always  when  such  moments  had  come  into 
his  life  here  he  was  meeting  and  speaking  with 
Mirandolina  again  at  the  Hall  which  was  the 
Headquarters  of  the  present  activity.  She  was  a 
member  of  the  Cumman-nam-Ban  which  had  been 
rapidly  organised  out  of  willing  material  where 
one  might  have  thought  there  was  none.  She  was 
being  trained  to  be  one  of  "  The  Sinn  Fein 
Nurses "  as  they  called  them  in  Ballycullen. 
Like  all  the  rest  she  had  been  compelled  to  seek 
Michael  for  patriotic  and  military  instruction. 
As  they  chatted  in  little  glad  moments  of  co-op- 
eration, he  was  again  something  like  the  man  she 
had  seen  in  the  part  of  Robert  Emmet.  He  ap- 
peared so  perfectly  unselfish  and  the  shop  of 
Seumas  McEvoy  had  become,  through  the  pros- 
perity which  had  fallen  upon  it,  more  like  Thomas 
Cooney's  than  a  real  Sinn  Fein  shop.  .  .  . 
And  he,  on  his  part,  was  well  content  to  forget  the 
many  little  slights  she  had  put  upon  him  for  sake 
of  two  others,  one  a  soldier  of  Britannia  and  the 
other  a  soldier  of  Kathleen-ni-Houlihan,  for  was 
he  not  already  a  man  of  power  without  any  of  the 
boorishness  which  had  long  distinguished  men  of 
power  in  Ballycullen.  As  much  as  possible  did  he 
want  to  hold  himself  as  an  object-lesson  in  what 
the  cultured  decency  of  Sinn  Fein  might  do  for  a 
man. 


224     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

"  And  him  only  a  common  shop-boy  in  Marcus 
Flynn's." 

"  The  Lord  save  us !  "  "  Did  anyone  ever  hear 
tell  of  the  like?" 

The  whole  country  was  in  a  vague  ferment  and 
no  one  at  all  seemed  certain  of  a  proper  course  of 
action.  The  Mansion  House  Conference  was  in 
session  with  the  object  of  formulating  "  an  offen- 
sive," as  the  now  blood-drenched  pens  of  the 
daily  press  were  calling  it.  Photographs  had  al- 
ready been  published  of  John  Dillon  sitting  at  the 
one  table  with  Eamonn  De  Valera.  This  evi- 
dence of  compromise  was  not  altogether  to  the 
mind  of  Michael.  He  foresaw  people,  individ- 
uals with  swollen  and  unhealthy  ideas  of  their 
own  importance,  making  determined  attempts 
to  attain  to  power  and  importance  out  of  the  pres- 
ent situation.  Already  was  their  talk  of  Funds, 
and  Funds  had  always  been  demoralising  and 
dangerous.  This  inability  to  escape  from  the  col- 
lection of  money  had  been  responsible  for  much 
of  the  drift  and  futility.  But  it  seemed  inevitable. 
Yet  was  the  mind  of  Michael  immensely  anxious 
to  hold  as  much  as  he  might  be  able  to  influence 
of  this  mighty  movement  cleanly  together  and  for 
clean  purposes.  He  had  burned  his  plan  after 
the  failure  of  Easter  Week,  1916,  but  now  rapidly 
into  his  mind  was  thronging  the  still  unshapen 
plans  of  another  adventure  for  love  of  Ire- 


THE  MATERIAL  DEFENCE       225 

land.  ...  It  grew  upon  him  through  the 
warm,  exciting  nights  of  April,  1918,  almost  with 
the  intense,  swift  gladness  of  the  pulsing  earth. 
Great  and  heavy  men  were  speaking  ponderously 
all  around  Ireland,  but  he  did  not  hear  them,  for 
his  own  mind  was  speaking  with  utter  truth  to 
his  own  heart. 

A  Defence  Committee  was  about  to  be  formed 
in  Ballycullen  and  it  was  upon  what  might  ap- 
pear such  a  poor,  ephemeral  foundation  that  he 
was  building  his  plan.  On  the  day  before  the  one 
upon  which  the  momentous  meeting  was  an- 
nounced to  be  held  he  called  the  Volunteers  to- 
gether after  a  route-march  and  addressed  them. 
This  was  his  second  speech.  The  first  time  had  been 
on  the  night  of  the  gun-running  at  Howth  in  1914, 
when  he  had  spoken  out  of  the  dream  of  his  plan 
for  an  Irish  Republic.  Now,  when  the  clay  of  his 
country  had  been  mixed  with  the  blood  of  Easter 
Week,  to  be  remoulded  into  better  men,  they  might 
fittingly  be  made  the  agents  of  a  better  plan.  .  .  . 
Even  as  he  spoke  he  saw  the  hoof-marks  of  Eng- 
land upon  the  faces  of  the  young  men  where  the 
accursed  British  Empire  had  trampled  out  their 
very  souls,  or  that  part  of  them  which  should  have 
burned  into  a  fierce  look,  now  that  their  very  lives 
were  threatened.  .  .  .  Michael  had  seen  the 
very  same  look,  subdued  almost  to  the  expression- 
lessness  of  spiritual  obliteration,  on  the  faces  of 


226      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

the  old,  old  men  who  had  spoken  of  defending  the 
coasts  after  Redmond  had  made  his  great  speech 
upon  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  .  .  .  These 
young  men  knew  nothing  of  their  language  nor 
of  the  history  of  their  country,  nor  of  any  decent 
scheme  of  co-operation  for  the  well-being  of  their 
country.  Yet  it  was  to  this  he  was  appealing  for 
assistance  in  winning  the  glorious  end  which  he 
saw  as  a  dim  radiance.  It  was  immensely  moving 
for  him  to  think  that  it  was  even  here  in  this 
great  movement  that  the  power  of  his  country's 
soul  was,  at  last,  fully  concentrated.  Their  lives 
were  threatened,  their  very  women  and  their 
homes,  and  was  not  the  old,  beloved  Ireland  their 
common  heritage?  Yet  was  it  a  pitiful  thing  to 
think  that,  after  all  the  deluge  of  words  that  had 
been  spoken  and  written,  and  after  all  the  fight- 
ing that  had  been  done  there  was  such  a  wide- 
mouthed  lack  of  understanding,  such  a  pachy- 
dermatous inability  to  understand.  ...  At 
the  end  of  his  words  they  still  seemed  uncon- 
vinced. 

He  was  compelled  to  feel  their  poor  regard  for 
him  after  all,  the  meanness  of  the  thoughts  now 
passing  through  their  minds.  .  .  .  What  he 
said  might  be  all  right  enough,  but  why  had  it  not 
come  from  the  leaders.  If  only  some  of  the  great 
men  of  the  day  said  it.  Why  wasn't  it  in  the 
daily  papers?  They  were  prepared  to  believe 


THE  MATERIAL  DEFENCE        227 

anything  that  might  appear  in  the  papers,  but  not 
the  stark  truth  that  he  had  been  trying  to  tell. 
They  would  make  a  great  show  at  the  meeting  to- 
morrow, as  was  only  natural  but  they  would  be 
led  by  the  leaders.  .  .  . 

To  him  there  was  only  one  aspect  of  leader- 
ship at  present,  the  truth  of  each  man's  soul  which 
had,  at  last,  resolved  itself  into  a  compelling  unity 
towards  realising  the  soul  of  the  nation.  But  the 
old  dredging  conception  of  leadership  still  clung 
about  their  minds  a  garment  of  gombeenism, 
gombeenism  of  Ballaghadereen,  gombeenism  of 
Ballycullen.  And  here  was  the  God-sent  oppor- 
tunity of  lifting  his  country  to  the  windy  summits 
of  freedom  out  of  the  boggy  lands  of  bond- 
age. .  .  .  He  had  sudden  remembrance  that 
the  clanking  of  chains  had  filled  all  the  little 
room  where  he  had  thought  out  his  plan  for  a 
rising,  only  to  burn  it  in  the  same  room  after 
Easter  Week.  But  the  plan  and  the  hope  he  had 
in  his  mind  now  could  not  fail.  It  was  a  real 
thing,  for  it  had  come  of  the  reality  that  had  been 
forced  upon  him.  His  every  other  thought  had 
been  but  the  sadness  of  all  dreaming. 

The  Defence  Committee  would  not  be  formed 
from  the  men  of  power  in  Ballycullen,  but  from 
the  young  men,  the  men  directly  affected  by  the 
proposed  extension  of  the  Military  Service  Act  to 
Ireland,  the  Volunteers.  The  sovereign  power  of 


228      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

the  nation  would  be  vested  in  them  and  they 
would  stand  for  a  proud  expression  of  the  Na- 
tion's will.  All  the  old  forces  of  re-action  and 
decay  must  sink  into  the  background.  Men  of 
importance  in  little  places  would  be  put  in  such 
a  position  of  insignificance  and  defeat  as  would 
fittingly  express  the  spent  forces  which  had  once 
made  them  powerful.  The  District  Councils,  the 
County  Councils,  all  those  outposts  of  Dublin 
Castle  would  be  swept  away.  It  almost  seemed 
queer  to  think  that  England  had  been  so  fool- 
ish as  to  give  them  this  golden  opportunity. 
But  the  statesmanship  of  England  had  been  on 
the  decline  ever  since  the  days  of  "  ould  Glad- 
stone." The  Ireland  which  had  once  kept  its 
edge  so  keen  had  rusted  only  to  spring  by  a  mir- 
acle now  as  a  clean  and  shining  blade  at  the 
heart  of  the  Empire.  The  Empire  was  down  and 
out.  And  here,  a  part  of  some  magical  revenge, 
was  a  great  army,  a  line  of  steely  determination 
across  Ireland.  .  .  .  This  day  also  did  he 
break  into  a  lone  cry  on  paper  which  he  hoped 
might  appear  in  print  even  at  the  bottom  of  some 
heavier  and  more  important  stuff  in  the  daily 
press.  His  letter  related  to  the  Defence  Com- 
mittees. ...  It  seemed  to  hint  that  they 
might  be  made  the  basis  of  a  representative 
assembly  to  express  the  country  at  its  cleanest 
and  best.  He  had  a  notion  that  in  other  places 


THE  MATERIAL  DEFENCE       229 

it  might  touch  other  minds  with  the  flame  that 
had  been  lit  in  his.  .  .  .  After  all  the  paper 
he  had  blackened,  this  had  the  sudden,  glorious 
appearance  of  the  first  real  bit  of  writing  he  had 

done  for  Ireland. 
******** 

It  was  a  lovely  April  day  when  the  Volunteers 
trooped  into  the  meeting  to  elect  a  Defence  Com- 
mittee  for  the  Parish.  There  was  no  ear-split- 
ting music  this  time,  just  an  air  of  quiet  de- 
termination and  a  brake  drawn  up  in  the  street. 
It  was  Thomas  Cooney's  brake  and  the  implica- 
tion of  ownership  was  ominous.  Before  the 
Volunteers  were  well  in  line  with  it  there  was 
Thomas  himself  climbing  into  it  with  the  same 
show  of  dignity,  or  rather  of  arrogant  display 
which  of  old  he  had  shown  upon  ascending  the 
platform  of  any  meeting  that  had  ever  been  held 
in  Ballycullen.  He  was  immediately  followed  by 
some  of  the  most  select  young  men  in  the  parish. 
The  aspiring  fops  of  farmers,  who,  through  power 
and  pride  of  their  war-profits,  had  long  since  su- 
perseded poor  Mr.  St.  John  Marlowe  and  the 
snobs  of  his  old  days.  They  had  sheltered  with 
simulated  enthusiasm  behind  Sinn  Fein  while  huge 
sums  by  way  of  excess  profits  in  their  cattle  were 
rolling  in  as  a  steady  tide.  They  were  consequent- 
ly most  anxious  to  save  themselves  from  conscrip- 
tion now  and  what  better  security  did  the  moment 


230      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

offer  than  a  seat  on  the  Defence  Committee  ?  In 
fact,  one  of  them  was  already  speaking  and 
Thomas  Cooney  was  speaking  and  Marcus 
Flynn  was  speaking  and  Gilbert  McCormack  was 
making  the  best  effort  he  could  to  interject  a 
stutter  here  and  there.  They  all  seemed  to  be 
muttering  mugger-mugger  at  the  same  moment, 
publicly  for  the  benefit  of  the  crowd  and  between 
themselves  for  their  own  purposes.  .  .  . 
Then  it  appeared  that  the  miracle  had  been  ef- 
fected, that  the  Defence  Committee  had  leaped 
suddenly  into  being.  ...  A  young  fair- 
haired  man,  who  by  the  assurance  of  him,  one 
would  say,  in  the  language  of  Ballycullen,  was 
stinking  with  pride,  proceeded  to  read  out  the 
names.  It  included  the  Clergy,  who  were  ex-officio 
members  of  the  Committee,  but  who  were  not  pres- 
ent, followed  immediately  by  the  names  of  Thomas 
Cooney,  Marcus  Flynn  and  Gilbert  McCormack, 
followed  by  the  names  of  the  cowardly  well- 
dressed  young  men  who  now  clung,  as  it  were,  to 
the  brake,  as  if  it  represented  their  last  refuge 
from  conscription.  .  .  .  The  scene  and  its 
meeting  seemed  to  dance  before  Michael's  mind 
as  if  out  of  a  slimy  sickness.  .  .  .  He 
whispered  something  to  those  near  him  and  there 
was  just  the  glimmer  of  indignation  passing 
swiftly  through  the  ranks  for  a  moment.  .  .  » 
But  it  was  stilled  into  a  little,  cold  moment  of 


THE  MATERIAL  DEFENCE       231 

desolation  by  the  powerful  pronouncement  now 
proceeding  from  the  brake.  ...  A  list  of 
initial  subscriptions  to  the  Anti-Conscription 
Fund  was  now  being  read  aloud.  A  generous  im- 
pulse of  gratitude  seemed  to  hurry  through  the 
very  heart  of  the  meeting.  The  sudden  murmur 
of  disapproval  was  being  replaced  by  applause, 
even  cheering,  as  the  various  amounts  astounded 
of  a  sudden  by  their  generosity.  ...  It  was 
swiftly  clear  to  Michael  that  every  effort  had  been 
in  vain  and  very  terribly  clear  as  well  was  the 
thought  that  this  very  scene  was  being  enacted 
all  over  Ireland  at  this  very  moment  so  that  his 
second  great  plan  for  the  salvation  of  Ireland  was 
at  an  end.  .  .  .  But  in  this,  the  abysmal 
moment  of  his  sorrow  and  the  wildest  cry  of  his 
heart,  he  seemed  to  be  hurried  on  between  his 
anger  and  his  agony  to  the  supreme  moment  of 
his  life.  He  had  a  notion  that,  out  of  all  that 
stupid,  staring  throng,  only  one  pair  of  eyes  was 
upon  him  as  he  went  over  to  the  brake  to  make  his 
protest.  .  .  . 

That  this  Defence  Committee  had  been  irregu- 
larly selected  and  so  did  not  represent  the  true 
feelings  of  those  most  directly  concerned,  those 
liable  for  military  service.  .  .  .  An  agonised 
hush  began  to  fall  upon  the  crowd.  It  seemed 
that  the  amazing  madness  of  his  action  had  not 
been  fully  realised.  There  was  an  immense  still- 


232      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

ness  in  the  air  as  if  after  some  great  catastrophe. 
It  would  almost  appear  as  if  the  sky  had  fallen 
down  about  Ballycullen.  .  .  . 

A  small  man  with  a  pinched,  peevish  face  now 
rose  in  the  brake.  His  small  eyes  and  narrow  slit 
of  a  mouth  seemed  to  exude  fire.  He  proceeded 
to  wipe  out  any  slight  impression  that  Michael 
might  have  made  by  a  spitefully  contrived 
little  blast  of  words.  .  .  .  The  Committee 
had  been  elected  and  what  the  hell  did  he  want 
by  interrupting  them  and  insulting  them  like 
this?  ...  It  was  the  general  feeling  of  the 
meeting  that  it  was  disgraceful.  So  it  was,  that 
even  one  man  could  be  found  in  the  place  pre- 
pared to  make  an  attack  upon  the  unity  that  had 
come  upon  them,  and  the  like  of  which  the  world 
had  never  before  seen.  .  .  . 

A  kind  of  last  lone  silence  seemed  to  fall  upon 
Michael  and  upon  the  Ballycullen  which  he  saw 
around  him  through  a  haze  of  pain.  .  .  . 
Could  it  be  that  he  had  been  finally  broken  even 
as  his  father  had  been  broken? 


CHAPTER  XIX 

AN  ENEMY  OF  HIS  PEOPLE 

THE  succeeding  days  were  the  most  intense 
and  startling  that  Michael  had  yet  lived. 
It  was  made  to  appear  by  every  effort  of 
mean  minds  and  lying  tongues  that  he  had  done  a 
disgraceful  thing.    The  looks  of  those  he  met  were 
averted  in  disdain.    The  people  who  came  into  the 
shop,  Volunteers  and  the  rest,  hurried  out  as  soon 
as  they  had  made  their  purchases  or  dropped  the 
observations  they  had  come  to  make  about  the 
weather  or  the  state  of  Ireland. 

It  would  appear,  from  the  papers  of  the  time, 
that  a  most  determined  attempt  had  been  made 
all  over  Ireland  to  destroy  any  hope  of  extend- 
ing into  reality  the  great  thing  he  had  seen  in  the 
middle  of  his  mind.  But  all  Ireland  seemed 
vastly  delighted  with  itself  because  of  the  part  it 
had  played.  There  was  so  much  blather  about 
"  a  Nation's  will "  that  one  might  be  almost  in- 
duced to  think  that  Ireland  had  at  last  come  into 
possession  of  a  will.  ...  Of  course,  Bally- 
cullen  stood  by  the  Defence  Committee  it  had 

233 


234     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

elected,  had  added  its  quota  to  this  awful  power, 
•and  Michael  could  not  suddenly  become  aware 
of  anything  noble  in  the  air  around  him.  It 
rather  seemed  filled  with  the  odour  of  pride,  a  kind 
of  blood-begotten  stench  which  had  been  wafted 
across  Ireland  from  the  European  war.  The  situ- 
ation was  well  epitomized  in  the  fact  that  the 
feelings  of  Ireland  were  about  to  express  them- 
selves in  the  largest  subscription  that  Ireland  had 
ever  seen.  It  seemed  particularly  fitting,  indeed, 
in  spite  of  its  irony,  that  the  depth  and  degree  of 
Ireland's  present  hatred  for  England  should  be 
expressed  in  terms  of  the  money  that  had  been 
made  out  of  England  through  the  war.  The  blood 
of  Ireland  was  to  be  spared  through  sheer  dint 
of  blood-money,  but  nothing  that  England  had 
done  heretofore  had  to  such  an  extent  perturbed 
those  who  had  always  availed  themselves  of  the 
opportunity  of  making  money  out  of  every  turn 
in  the  tide  of  affairs.  For  a  week  they  were  like 
madmen  not  knowing  whither  to  turn,  but  seeming 
to  think  vaguely  all  the  while  that  by  signing  their 
names  to  the  anti-conscription  pledge  they  would 
be  somehow  spared  to  make  more  money  and  that 
by  joining  the  Volunteers,  or  "  the  Vollyunteers," 
as  they  were  termed  in  affectionate  anxiety,  they 
would  not  have  to  fight,  although  someone  would 
fight  for  them.  .  .  .  There  was  a  set  of  wild 
fellows  in  Ireland  that  could  always  be  depended 


AN  ENEMY  OF  HIS  PEOPLE      23$ 

on  in  a  push.  ...  Hence  this  remarkable 
hurry  to  join  the  Volunteers,  just,  as  a  few  years 
before,  men  had  been  running  to  join  the  United 
Irish  League  in  the  hope  of  getting  a  bit  of  land. 

All  the  potential  manhood  of  Ireland  had  al- 
ready been  captured  again  by  the  very  forces 
which  held  with  the  strongest  links  the  chains 
about  the  mind  of  Ireland.  It  was  not  from  the 
Sinn  Fein  leaders  that  Michael  could  conceive 
that  they  would  take  their  orders  now,  but  from 
Thomas  Cooney  and  Marcus  Flynn  and  their  like, 
as  exemplified  here  in  Ballycullen,  the  men  who 
had  made  exhibitions  of  their  qualities  all  over 
Ireland  in  the  amounts  of  their  subscriptions  to 
the  Anti-Conscription  Fund.  They  were  exces- 
sively self-conscious,  feeling  themselves  the  bone 
and  sinew  of  the  country  at  the  present  time.  The 
fact  that  twopence  ha'penny  could  still  look  down 
upon  a  twopence,  even  in  the  presence  of  death, 
was  manifest  in  their  every  expression  of  opinion. 

"  Fellows,  begad,  like  Mickeen  Dempsey,  talk- 
ing about  a  Republic.  That's  the  curse  of  God 
nonsense  that  has  ruined  The  Cause  always,  fel- 
lows with  no  stake  in  the  country,  not  caring  a 
damn,  of  course,  whether  they  play  England's 
game  or  not,  fellows  with  nothing  to  lose.  Talk- 
ing about  a  Republic,  moryah." 

"  Here  was  a  way  of  showing  what  they  thought 


236     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

about  Ireland,  but  sure  the  most  of  them  had 
subscribed  nearly  nothing  as  yet." 

"They  might  give  a  shilling  or  so,  or  a  half- 
crown,  but  it  was  men  like  Thomas  Cooney  and 
Marcus  Flynn,  with  their  vast  subscriptions,  that 
would  save  them." 

"A  fellow  like  Mickeen  Dempsey  was  enough 
to  give  you  the  sick,  anyway,  having  the  cheek  to 
go  talk  about  Independence  and  about  Ireland, 
and  Marcus  Flynn  keeping  up  his  mother  and 
sister  for  so  long." 

"And  what  had  he  given  to  the  Anti-Conscrip- 
tion Fund?" 

"  He  had  subscribed  nothing  so  far,  for  he  had 
objected  to  the  way  the  people  of  the  parish  had 
elected  the  Defence  Committee." 

The  feeling  of  antagonism  against  him,  find- 
ing expression  in  such  talk,  was  growing  apace. 
He  could  feel  it  all  the  week,  a  rumour  of  con- 
flict in  the  air  around  him.  Marcus  would  come 
occasionally  into  the  shop  with  a  leer  of  contempt 
upon  his  face,  but  without  speaking  a  word.  His 
quizzical,  contemptuous  glance  would  seem  to  say 
ten  thousand  things,  but  his  pride  in  feeling  him- 
self a  kind  of  saviour  of  his  country  would  pre- 
vent him  opening  his  mouth. 

Kevin  Shanaghan  came  in  just  once  for  the 
price  of  a  pint.  His  serious,  remote  smile  seemed 
warmed  a  little  into  a  kind  of  sympathy. 


"  D'ye  know  what  you'.re  after  doing  Michael?" 
he  said. 

"  No !"  said  Michael  dully. 

"  Well,  you're  after  telling  the  truth  and  that's 
the  greatest  crime  that  anyone  can  commit  in 
Ballycullen  or  in  fact  in  any  part  of  Ireland." 

Passing  the  door  a  little  later,  Connor  Car- 
berry  gave  Michael  a  glance  of  pride  through  the 
open  doorway  and  raised  his  hand  to  the  salute. 
There  seemed  to  be  no  need  of  words;  they  were 
true  brothers  in  the  kinship  of  love  and  suffering 
for  Ireland.  It  was  a  noble  gesture,  surely,  hold- 
ing something  almost  lyrical  in  its  grandeur,  that 
flashed  into  life  with  the  movement  of  that 
gnarled,  withered  hand. 

At  home  there  was  a  recurrence,  very  heavily, 
of  the  old  shadow  over  the  house  and  by  the  very 
fireside  where  his  father  had  sat  talking  Parnel- 
lite  and  Fenian  and  rebel  talk  with  Leum  Brod- 
erick.  His  mother  and  sister,  although  as  in- 
nocent as  ever  of  interference  in  the  life  of 
Ballycullen,  seemed  somehow  doomed  to  suffer 
still.  They  were  content  in  the  possession  of 
Michael,  and  his  mother  had  had  no  thought  at 
any  time  that  he  would  come  to  be  mixing  him- 
self up  to  his  misfortune  with  the  things  that  had 
ruined  his  father.  She  had  never  made  any  at- 
tempt to  understand  all  the  books  and  papers  he 
would  be  bringing  into  the  lonely  room.  She  had 


238      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

made  no  attempt  to  prevent  it,  although  she  had 
always  disliked  to  see  him  giving  so  much  time 
to  brooding  and  reading. 

Now,  when  she  saw  the  great  quietness  of  a  pas- 
sionate determination  upon  him,  she  felt  in  all 
the  strong,  wise  fear  of  her  motherhood  that  this 
terrible  thing  called  Ireland,  which  had  ruined  her 
man,  was  now  throwing  its  shadow  over  the  life  of 
her  son.  .  .  .  These  two  poor  quiet  souls 
without  anger  or  harm.  .  .  .  He  saw  his 
own  sorrow  mirrored  clearly  in  the  sorrow  of 
their  eyes.  .  .  .  They  were  doomed  to  suffer 
again  even  as  all  three  had  suffered  through  the 
man  who  had  followed  Parnell.  .  .  . 

Just  now  the  evenings  were  growing  longer  and 
an  intense  realisation  of  the  sorrow  he  was  about 
to  bring  upon  them  drove  him  forth  again  at 
moments  when  he  should  have  made  the  little 
room,  as  always,  a  retreat  from  the  torture  of 
Marcus  Flynn's.  .  .  .  There  seemed  no  one 
left  with  whom  he  might  find  pleasure  in  a  con- 
versation of  an  evening.  They  looked  at  him 
with  averted  eyes  and  he  passed  amongst  them  as 
one  about  to  be  cast  out  by  his  people.  He  no- 
ticed that  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Volunteers  had 
begun  to  decline.  They  did  not  seem  to  be  going 
about  the  Hall  hurriedly,  eagerly,  always  on  mili- 
tary business,  as  it  were,  but  stood  idling  around 
the  corner,  after  the  old  fashion,  listlessly,  joy- 


AN  ENEMY  OF  HIS  PEOPLE      239 

lessly.  .  .  .  They  were  safe  again.  All  the 
strong  men  of  Ballycullen  were  at  the  head  of 
the  fund  which  was  to  save  them.  ...  It 
seemed  so  recently  that  Michael  had  been  striving 
to  tell  them  something  and  in  the  way  they  eyed 
him,  meanly,  suspiciously,  he  perceived  how  very 
little  they  must  think  of  him  now.  .  .  .  Many 
a  man  amongst  those  who  were  now  almost  middle- 
aged  had  recognised  the  futility  of  striving  to 
remedy  all  that  was  wrong  with  Ballycullen. 
They  had  been  content  to  recognise  in  Michael's 
earlier  attempts  to  express  himself  in  words  or 
action  something  that  reminded  them  of  their  own 
dreams,  less  fine  than  his,  perhaps,  yet  dreams  for 
all  that,  when  they,  too,  had  thought  of  breaking 
down  the  hate  and  pride  of  Ballycullen  for  love  of 
Ireland.  .  .  .  But  to  have  made  the  attempt 
and  failed  so  utterly  was  far  worse  than  their  own 
case,  who  had  made  no  attempt  at  all.  .  .  . 

On  the  third  evening  he  met  Mirandolina  as  he 
wandered  lonely  and  tortured  out  of  the  atmos- 
phere which  held  such  a  weight  of  sadness  for 
him.  She  would  seem  to  have  expected  a  meeting, 
so  anxiously  did  she  quicken  her  step  upon  his 
approach.  Many  a  time  had  she  hurt  him  here  in 
this  place,  which  must  be,  in  itself,  a  continual 
cause  of  hurt  to  him,  but  now  there  was  a  look  of 
compassion  in  her  eyes  which  gave  promise  of 
atonement. 


240      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

There  was  no  even  momentary  reserve  between 
them  because  of  anything  at  all  that  had  hap- 
pened. He  was  not  anxious  to  remember  what 
people  had  done  to  him,  for  he  was  too  fully  con- 
scious of  what  he  had  done  to  himself;  but  she 
was  a  woman  and  she  knew.  The  mother  instinct 
had  risen  supreme  over  Ballycullen  in  this  instant 
and  he  saw  that  her  look  was  deep  to  her  very 
soul  with  compassion.  .  *  .  She  felt  some- 
how that  what  had  happened  to  him  was  because 
of  things  he  had  done  for  her  sake.  It  might  be 
for  love  of  Ireland  he  had  worked,  but  it  was  for 
love  of  her,  too.  Yet  he  had  not  wrought  in  the 
way  she  had  intended.  He  had  merely  gone  on 
attempting  to  commingle  two  loves,  an  impossi- 
bility. If  only  they  had  never  met  he  might  by 
this  time  have  died  for  Ireland.  If  this  insane 
love  of  Ireland  had  not  caught  him  young,  he 
might  have  become  a  better  man  to  work  for  his 
mother  and  sister.  .  .  .  He  might  have  had 
that  little  shop  by  the  time  Sinn  Fein  became  such 
a  thriving  business,  and  made  just  as  much  out 
of  it  as  Seumas  McEvoy.  .  .  .  Sure  all  the 
little  jealousies  she  had  tried  to  fan  up  in  his 
mind  had  only  been  to  make  him  practical,  to 
pull  him  down  out  of  his  dream.  .  .  . 

The  truth  was  if  only  he  had  not  been  so  blind 
he  might  have  seen  that  she  had  loved  him  very 
beautifully  always.  It  was  for  his  sake  solely 


AN  ENEMY  OF  HIS  PEOPLE      241 

that  she  had  tried  to  contrive  the  best  plans  for 
him  that  would  come  into  her  mind.  And  now 
to  think  that  he  was  ending  in  this  defeat  and 
disaster. 

Now  she  told  him  with  such  a  rush  of  words 
as  made  everything  clearer  than  any  noonday  he 
had  ever  known  in  Ballycullen. 

"  Oh,  Michael,  dear,  I'm  sorry,  sorry  that  ever 
I  hurt  your  feelings  in  the  least,  for  I  know  that 
your  mind  is  sensitive  and  grander  in  the  way  it 
understands  things  than  any  mind  that  ever  was 
here  in  Ballycullen.  But  you  have  wasted  your 
sweetness  on  the  desert  air.  D'ye  remember  a  few 
years  ago  when  we  played  together  in  Robert 
Emmet,  and  you  used  to  have  such  talks  with 
me  at  the  rehearsals  and  everything.  I  saw  the 
way  your  lofty,  Nationalist  notions  might  lead 
you  then,  and  I  tried  to  tell  you,  but  it  was  no 
use.  You  were  blind,  blind,  and  it  used  to  mad- 
den me.  It  made  me  do  mad  things  that  you 
must  have  thought  me  a  worthless  flirt  on  account 
of  doing.  I  went  walking  with  Ambrose  Donohue, 
the  soldier,  and  I  used  to  spend  the  evenings  talk- 
ing with  Seumas  McEvoy,  the  Sinn  Feiner.  But 
sure  most  of  the  time  I  only  used  to  be  telling 
them  what  asses  I  thought  the  both  of  them,  and 
how  true  I  was  to  you,  all  the  time,  and  that  you 
were  the  only  one  I  ever  thought  worth  speaking 
to  around  Bullycullen.  I  used  to  be  hearing  mean 


242      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

little  talk  about  you  that  you  never  heard  your- 
self. I  knew  that  when  you  began  to  put  your- 
self up  as  a  leader  here  you  were  only  making  a 
fool  of  yourself.  I  didn't  like  to  hurt  your  feel- 
ings by  telling  you,  but  God  knows  I  was  always 
burning  to  tell  and  I  used  to  be  more  annoyed 
about  you  than  you'll  ever  know  now.  .  .  . 
But  now  I  suppose  you  see  the  truth  of  things  at 
last.  What  will  Ballycullen  do  for  you  now,  what 
will  Ireland  do  for  you?  Nothing  —  nothing  at 
all.  You  have  only  me.  But,  Michael,  dear,  you 
have  me  now  and  always.  I'll  not  forsake  you, 
never  fear.  But  for  my  sake,  in  return,  you'll 
have  to  be  done  with  your  dreams.  Let  us  think 
only  of  one  another.  Between  us,  Michael,  we 
should  be  able  to  weather  it  out  together,  let  the 
worst  come  to  the  worst.  It's  reported  everywhere 
to-day  that  Marcus  Flynn  is  going  to  sack  you  im- 
mediately, but  that  he's  going  to  make  himself  out 
a  great  fellow  by  not  disturbing  your  mother  and 
sister.  And  surely  we  can  do  much  better  for 
them,  the  two  of  us,  when  you  are  away  from 
Ballycullen.  God  knows,  they  haven't  had  much 
pleasure  in  their  lives." 

He  tried  to  speak,  but  she  overwhelmed  him 
with  words.  She  would  seem  to  have  been  sent 
to  snatch  him  from  some  final  byeway  of  de- 
struction. She  seemed  to  think  that  he  was  one 
who  might  easily  drift  into  hopelessness  and  the 


AN  ENEMY  OF  HIS  PEOPLE      243 

heaviest  doom  of  defeat.  Her  face  was  wet  with 
hot  tears  as  he  kissed  her. 

"  And  I  suppose  you  didn't  hear  that  you  are 
going  to  be  arrested  this  evening?" 

"Arrested  for  what,  Mirandolina?  " 

"  For  being  a  spy  and  an  informer  and  a 
traitor.  It's  after  being  well  worked  up  by 
Thomas  Cooney.  I  saw  some  of  the  best  scoun- 
drels in  the  Volunteers  leaving  it  this  evening; 
they  want  to  disgrace  you  if  they  can  before  they 
drive  you  out  of  Ballycullen." 

"  But  I've  done  nothing.  I  can  explain.  I  can 
defend  myself.  I  haven't  explained  to  you  yet, 
Mirandolina.  I'm  sure  you  can  see  why  I  acted 
as  I  did  on  Sunday  —  " 

"  Of  course,  darling.  But  don't  demean  your- 
self by  giving  them  this  final  chance  at  you. 
Come  on,  darling,  and  we'll  talk  about  leaving 
Ballycullen  to-morrow." 

"  It  may  mean  leaving  Ireland." 

As  he  turned  to  look  at  her  the  full  meaning 
of  his  words  seemed  to  blot  out  for  an  instant  the 
very  soul  of  Michael.  ...  To  think  of  leaving 
Ireland,  but  he  must  be  immensely  fond  of 
Mirandolina  now.  .  .  . 

"  Come  on!  "  she  said. 

But  just  then  six  men  sprang  across  the 
demesne  wall  and  seized  him  roughly. 

"  We  arrest  you  in  the  name  of  the  '  Irish  Re- 


244     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

public',"  they  said,  "  and  you  must  come  to  be 
courtmarti ailed    by    the    Competent    Volunteer 

Authority." 

£  $  £  jfc  $  4c  4c  4< 

Mirandolina  laughed  almost  through  her  tears 
as  she  hurried  back  into  Ballycullen.  It  might 
be  just  as  well  to  convince  him  finally,  she 
thought.  .  .  .  Yet  as  she  walked,  with  a  f  aintness 
flowing  in  to  numb  almost  the  very  limbs  that 
carried  her,  this  evening  of  tears  falling  heavier 
momentarily,  there  were  odd  great  flashes  of 
strength  from  a  woman's  mighty  passion  to  sustain 
her.  Yet  was  the  very  power  of  her  love  being 
blown  out  in  these  fierce  gusts.  .  .  .  The  dis- 
tance of  Ballycullen  from  the  place  where  she 
had  just  dwelt  in  gladness  for  a  moment  with 
Michael  seemed  such  a  great  way,  surely,  this 
misty,  darkling  evening.  .  .  .  Oh,  God,  she 
might  never  be  able  to  walk  down  the  street  and 
into  Thomas  Cooney's.  .  .  .  But  suddenly 
upon  the  light  wind  came  a  sound  of  singing. 
The  magic  of  a  noble  anger  flashed  her  poor 
movement  into  the  grace  and  majesty  of  a  queen. 
.  .  .  Oh,  she  was  proud  now,  proud  and  strong 
again.  .  .  .  For  the  men  who  had  marched 
Michael  away  were  singing,  almost,  it  appeared, 
with  no  other  purpose  than  that  of  lifting  her 
mood  upon  each  bar  of  the  song. 


AN  ENEMY  OF  HIS  PEOPLE      245 

"  In  valley  green,  on  towering  crag,  our  fathers  fought 

before  us, 
And  conquered  'neath  the  same  old  flag  that's  proudly 

floating  o'er  us; 

We're  children  of  a  fighting  race, 
That  never  yet  has  known  disgrace, 
And  as  we  march  the  foe  to  face 
We'll  chant  a  soldier's  song." 


CHAPTER  XX 

EXODUS 

THERE  was  a  remarkable  air  of  excitement 
about  the  Hall  this  evening.  It  seemed 
almost  incredible  that  the  lethargy  of  the 
place  could  have  been  so  swiftly  electrified  into  a 
lively  eventfulness.  But  an  explanation  seemed 
to  linger  in  the  fact  when  Michael  remembered 
that  this  evening  he  was  about  to  be  court- 
martialled  in  the  name  of  Ireland.  What  on 
earth  had  he  done  ?  He  could  remember  nothing. 
Yet  his  appearance  here  to-night  must  be  at  the 
bidding  of  Kathleen-ni-Houlihan  to  answer  for 
some  crime  against  her.  Although  there  was  a 
burning  pain  in  his  mind,  he  suddenly  remembered 
himself  in  great  company,  yet  not  with  those  who 
had  all  died  the  same  way,  not  with  Robert  Em- 
met or  Padraic  Pearse,  with  Wolfe  Tone  or  Roger 
Casement,  or  any  man  of  them  at  all  who  had 
fallen  before  the  might  of  Britannia.  There  was 
one  man  who  appeared  in  the  remembered  trag- 
edy of  his  life  and  in  the  poor,  dark  ending  of 
that  life  to  be  suddenly  akin  to  him,  and  this  man 

246 


EXODUS  247 

was  Parnell.  He  remembered  again  the  supple- 
ment from  the  weekly  papers  pasted  on  the  wall 
when  he  was  a  lad,  and  his  father's  words : 

"  There's  poor  Parnell,  Michaeleen !  the  poor 
fellow.  It's  a  hard  case  to  think  that  it  was  my 
own  very  countrymen  killed  him.  It's  even 
worse  to  think  that  they  pegged  muck  into  his 
eyes  and  lime  before  they  murdered  him  out- 
right." 

This  was  what  his  love  of  Ireland  had  brought 
Parnell  and  later  the  same  fate  to  his  own  father, 
and  now  to  him,  averted  looks  as  he  was  dragged 
into  the  hall  to  be  given  some  sort  of  mock  trial 
before  being  driven  out  by  his  people.  ...  It 
was  England  that  had  tried  Roger  Casement,  who 
had  gone  to  his  doom  "  in  right  noble  succession 
and  in  good  company."  But  this  Volunteer  Hall, 
where  the  lights  were  now  glinting  so  queerly  was 
in  Ireland.  The  Volunteers  were  for  Ireland  and 
he  was  for  Ireland.  God  only  knew  how  much 
he  was  for  Ireland.  He  was  about  to  lose  the 
little  job,  which  meant  so  much  to  his  mother  and 
sister,  for  sake  of  Ireland.  He  felt  chilled  and 
lonely,  but  he  thought  that  the  eyes  of  Mirando- 
lina  Conway  were  looking  into  his  eyes.  .  .  . 
Men  came  thronging  into  the  hall  with  an  en- 
thusiasm he  had  never  before  seen  amongst  the 
Volunteers.  They  had  never  been  quite  able  to 
accomplish  the  pure  virtue  of  Patriotism,  but  they 


248     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

were  well  versed  in  all  the  ways  of  "  downing  " 
another  man.  They  were  forever  prating  about 
"  Freedom  "  and  yet  an  infernal  hatred  had  ever 
sprung  into  their  hearts  for  the  men  who  had 
stood  nearest  to  freedom  in  their  own  lives. 

"  The  breed  of  Priesthunters  and  informers !  " 
said  someone.  He  looked  around  and  there  stood 
Connor  Carberry.  In  his  presence  Michael  did 
not  feel  so  much  alone.  The  "  Commandant " 
for  the  district  took  the  chair.  He  was  a  slight, 
fair-haired  young  man,  with  something  of 
Michael's  idealistic  look,  something  of  the  trust- 
ing, kindly  regard  of  all  men  which  was  not  the 
look  of  the  little  people  with  the  little  eyes.  .  .  . 
His  sincerity  was  apparent,  and,  so  dispassionate 
did  Michael  grow  by  turns,  so  perfectly  objective 
concerning  all  that  had  determined  the  present 
mess  of  his  life,  that  he  thought  of  this  young 
man  as  coming  inevitably  some  day  to  know  the 
torture  that  he  was  enduring  now.  Beside  him 
sat  two  captains  of  Volunteers  from  neighbouring 
towns.  The  "  Commandant "  had  contrived  the 
best  show  of  fair  play  that  was  possible.  He  was 
only  the  son  of  a  small  shopkeeper  in  Castle- 
connor  and  his  commandantship  in  the  Volunteers 
was  probably  beginning  to  help  already  towards 
the  ultimate  ruin  of  himself  and  his  father.  Per- 
haps the  gombeenism  of  such  as  Thomas  Cooney 
extending  subtly  through  its  power  over  his 


EXODUS  249 

father  to  him  aimed  him  in  its  mean  bondage  too. 
So  what  he  might  do  now,  for  sake  of  his  own 
soul  and  of  Ireland,  would  cause  the  Hall  to  re- 
echo curiously  with  the  sound  of  another  clank- 
ing of  chains.  .  .  .  But  still  it  was  his  father 
who  would  suffer  most  the  pain  of  this  wild  effort 
towards  release. 

He  proceeded  to  read  the  Constitution  of  the 
Irish  Volunteers  and  then  to  ask  for  a  definite 
charge  against  Michael.  There  was  dead  silence. 
.  .  .  This  was  the  way  to  treat  him.  Already 
were  they  cringing  respectfully  behind  their  dark 
scowls. 

"  You  see,"  he  continued,  "  we  are  a  military 
organisation." 

"Might  I  offer  a  suggestion,"  said,  or  rather 
stuttered,  Gilbert  McCormack. 

"No  suggestion;  this  is  not  a  discussion.  It  is 
a  courtmartial  in  the  name  of  the  Irish  Republic." 

"  It's  the  finishing  touch  to  a  damnable  in- 
former that  we're  going  to  run  out  of  Ballycullen 
this  bloody  evening." 

"  But  there's  no  charge.  Not  a  man  amongst 
you  has  even  had  the  spunk  to  formulate  a 
charge." 

"  Oh,  we  don't  want  any  of  this  highfalutin 
that  you'd  see  in  an  account  of  a  courtmartial  in 
an  English  paper.  We  don't  want  to  copy  the 
British  even  in  that,  for  we're  the  heart's  blood  of 


250     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

true  Sinn  Feiners.  We  want  to  put  a  stop  to  this 
fellow's  gallop  in  Ballycullen  and  it'll  have  to  be 
done  at  all  costs." 

Now  that  such  a  successful  opening  had  been 
made  by  this  hired  man,  around  the  hall  rose  a 
low  "Boo-oo-oo!  "  which  had  almost  the  quality 
of  a  bull's  bellow.  So  sudden  and  vehement  was  it 
that  it  left  a  kind  of  singing  in  Michael's  ears. 
Momentarily,  too,  it  seemed  to  lift  his  blindness. 
But  then  it  was  another  blindness  again.  The 
mixture  of  daylight  and  candlelight  made  each 
face  look  sickly.  There  crushed  in  around  him 
a  mass  of  leering,  sweating  faces  that  was  almost 
an  obscenity  of  the  flesh  like  some  stupendous 
vomit.  Yet  even  as  this  dark-faced,  unshaven 
lout  stood  there  with  such  an  admirable,  although 
affected,  air  of  antagonism,  Michael  knew  that  he 
was  a  paid  man  and  that  a  good  deal  of  free 
drink  had  gone  to  the  creation  of  his  present  en- 
thusiasm. It  was  the  power  of  gombeenism 
again,  so  powerfully  manifested  always,  whether 
it  was  its  hoof  or  its  head  appeared,  in  the  linea- 
ments and  significance  of  a  beast. 

"  I  won't  drill  under  this  man  and  especially 
on  behalf  of  the  young  men  of  Ballycullen.  I'll 
go  so  far  as  to  say  that  not  a  man  of  us  will  drill 
under  him." 

"Why?" 

The  sharply  interjected  question  of  the  Com- 


EXODUS  251 

mandant  sounded  clean  with  decision  as  a  rifle 
shot  in  the  intense,  dead  quietness. 

"We  won't  have  this  fellow,  that's  all!  " 
a  few  men  shout  in  support  of  their  cham- 
pion. 

"  Well,  you  know,  I,  as  his  superior  officer,  have 
no  power  to  remove  him,  seeing  that  I  have  no 
evidence  that  he  has  broken  the  constitution  of 
the  Irish  Volunteers." 

"Are  you  going  to  shift  him?  Begod,  then,  if 
you're  not,  I  can  tell  you  that  we  are!  " 

"  Volunteers,  do  you  dispute  my  authority?  I 
have  been  freely  elected  by  yourselves  to  this  posi- 
tion of  command  over  you.  I  should  not  have 
taken  up  the  position  had  I  dreamt  for  a  moment 
you  would  not  be  led  by  me,  and  first,  at  least, 
against  —  the  British." 

Along  three  sides  of  the  Hall  were  ranged  ac- 
cusative, unanimous  Volunteers.  .  .  .  Their 
heads  were  hung  down  and  the  fact  that  they  had 
no  case  nor  no  charges  to  make  did  not  seem  to 
affect  the  solidity  with  which  they  sat  so  immov- 
ably there.  They  were  against  him,  that  was  all. 
The  talk  of  the  Commandant  sounded  far  beyond 
them.  They  had  come  here  after  saying  to  their 
comrades  in  the  pubs: 

"We'll  run  the  bastard  out  of  the  Vollyunteers 
and  we'll  do  more  than  that.  We'll  make  him 


252      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAIJNS 

out  such  a  scandalous  ruffian  that  the  priest'll, 
mebbe,  run  him  out  of  the  bloody  parish." 

They  could  not  very  well  go  back  to  their 
masters  and  say  that  they  had  not  been  able  to 
perform  the  work  for  which  they  had  got  the  drink 
and  the  money.  And  so  they  were  sullenly  an- 
tagonistic if  no  more.  .  .  .  They  punctuated 
their  smoking  by  spitting  hard  against  the  floor. 
.  .  .  God  blast  him  anyway !  .  .  .  Not  one 
of  them  had  a  word  to  say.  .  .  .  Was  he  going 
to  beat  them?  Look  at  the  way,  now,  that  this 
"  Commandant "  fellow  was  taking  his  part.  That 
cut  about  the  British  was  a  hard  one. 

"  I  want  a  definite  charge  and,  further,  I  want 
someone  to  prove  the  charge.  I  want  no  silly 
statements,  but  a  statement  of  fact  which  can  be 
proved." 

Still  for  some  moments  there  was  no  reply.  .  .  . 
Then  a  man  rose,  frozen,  as  it  were,  by  his  purpose 
into  perfect  rigidity.  He  was  a  paid  man,  hence 
his  aspect  of  fierce  sincerity.  A  chorus  of  ap- 
praisement and  approval  ran  all  around  the  room. 

"  Good  man!     Good  man!  ' 

They  were  Irish  faces  with  the  stubbles  brist- 
ling upon  them,  their  mid-week  beards.  They 
were  faces  of  men  of  the  country  for  which  all  the 
dead  had  died.  Always  there  had  been  in  the 
very  depths  of  Michael  an  intense  hatred  of  the 
soldiery  of  England,  and  after  the  rebellion  he 


EXODUS  253 

had  thought  how  splendid  it  would  have  been  to 
die,  as  he  looked  down  their  rifle-barrels  like 
Major  McBride.  But  the  faces  into  which  he 
looked  now  seemed  to  hold  a  fearful  and  abysmal 
hatred,  more  terrible  of  itself  than  any  death 
which  lurked  even  in  the  red  heart  of  a  rifle. 
They  were  upon  him  more  horribly  even  than  the 
little  wicked  eyes  of  rifles  fixed  upon  a  man's 
heart.  They  were  the  eyes  of  men,  and,  after  all, 
the  rifle  of  a  soldier  had  no  soul.  These  men 
of  Ballycullen  and  of  Ireland  talked  of  their 
Irish  Army  and  of  their  Republic,  but  all  seemed 
forgotten  in  this  moment  of  mad  anger  against 
the  man  of  clean  sincerity  who  had  sprung  from 
amongst  them.  Long  ago,  when  he  had  gone 
about  Ballycullen,  the  lonely  antagonist  of  Eng- 
land, they  had  distrusted  him  and  called  him  "  a 
mouth."  He  had  been  the  prophet  before  his 
time  and  in  his  own  country.  So  there  was  a 
double  reason  why  he  had  not  been  accepted.  .  .  . 
Yet  was  it  a  thing  of  bitter  cruelty  in  this  moment 
to  feel  that  they  thought  him  unfit  for  the  con- 
dition which  had  been  the  dream  of  his  life.  .  .  . 
How  the  little,  mean  howl  for  his  blood  was  be- 
ginning to  arise  from  these  countrymen  of  his 
who,  in  the  name  of  the  Irish  Republic,  were  doing 
this  for  the  very  force  which  still  threatened  to 
sell  their  souls  to  the  devil  and  their  bodies  into 
an  enduring  bondage.  His  blindness  was  lifting 


254     THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

higher  now,  yet  still  dark  and  lumpish,  like  the 
great  cloud  that  it  was  showing  painfully  bright 
beneath.  ...  There  came  little,  sudden  in- 
stants of  intense  clearness.  .  .  .  He  saw  Con- 
nor Carberry  getting  up  to  address  the  crowd. 
He  heard  him  struggling  with  his  passion  to  ex- 
press himself  in  words.  .  .  . 

"Love  is  blind!" 

This  was  a  futile  expression  from  a  girl's  novel 
and  seemed  greatly  frivolous  indeed  to  Michael 
as  it  occurred  to  his  mind  in  this  moment.  Yet 
is  there  an  immense  sad  truth  in  all  poor,  common 
things.  .  .  .  Why  was  Connor  Carberry  now 
striving  to  quiet  the  rabble?  He,  too,  had  been 
blind.  His  love  for  Ireland  had  blinded  him  to 
that  quality  in  his  countrymen  which  made  real 
Nationality  an  impossibility.  .  .  .  There  was 
this  old  man  now  going  down  so  emptily  to  the 
grave  and  yet  these  countrymen  of  his  were  un- 
able in  this  moment  to  think  well  of  him  or  do 
one  decent  action  to  atone  for  themselves  at  his 
bidding,  he  who  might  have  been  a  prophet 
amongst  a  more  chosen  people.  .  .  .  Yet  in 
the  great  brightness  which  came  rushing  in  rich 
waves  across  the  darkness  of  this  moment's  agony, 
it  seemed  good,  indeed,  that  this  ending  had  come, 
for  he  might  have  grown  old  in  his  foolishness, 
and  it  was  better,  maybe,  after  all  to  be  snatched 
a  brand  still  a  little  bright  from  the  burning.  H& 


EXODUS  255 

had  been  worsted  in  the  game  for  sake  of  Ireland, 
but  his  loss  had  been  well  spent  in  purchase  of 
this  fulness  of  vision  which  was  bursting  upon 
him.  The  part  of  his  life  which  had  gone  to  the 
making  of  this  moment  had  gone  more  fully  to 
the  making  of  him.  Above  the  howling  could 
now  be  heard  the  word  "  informer  "  being  mut- 
tered with  vehemence.  .  .  .  And  this  was  how 
the  intention  now  darting  through  his  mind  with 
the  pain  of  fire  must  finally  fix  him.  ...  He 
would  have  turned  his  coat,  anyway,  when  he  did 
what  was  his  purpose  now  and  behind  the  turn- 
coat there  always  lingers  the  suggestion  of  the 
traitor.  It  was  thus  that  he  would  be  fixed  in 
the  memory  of  Ballycullen  down  the  years  to  be, 
he  who  had  great  ambitions  to  be  very  different, 
indeed,  for  sake  of  them.  But  his  countrymen 
did  not  want  him.  He  could  never  be  of  the  sort 
that  they  still  wished  to  gather  to  their  breasts. 
.  .  .  .  And  now  the  miracle  had  happened  that 
he  had  no  longer  any  desire  to  be  beloved  by  them. 
His  mind  was  galloping  wildly  over  every 
thought  he  had  had  through  the  long  days  and 
nights  of  his  dreaming.  .  .  .  And  what  had 
England  ever  done  to  him?  Why,  nothing  at  all 
for  all  he  had  cried  out  with  those  who  cried  out 
of  ancient  rages.  Had  he  been  an  Englishman 
whose  only  desire  was  to  expend  himself  in  the 
service  of  his  country,  he  could  hardly  have  come 


256      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

to  this  moment.  There  could  be  no  meanness  in 
a  thought  merely  because  it  was  true.  And  it  was 
Ireland  that  had  done  this  to  him  now. 

There  rushed  upon  him  even  with  this  thought 
a  sadness  that  brought  him  almost  instantly  to 
tears.  .  .  .  But  what  of  the  thing  they  would 
say  in  Ballycullen  after  he  had  gone  from  it  for- 
ever? The  world  was  the  place  in  which  he 
would  be  living  from  henceforth.  It  was  very 
painful  to  remember  that  it  was  the  certain  traitor- 
ous element  in  Ireland  itself  that  was  about  to 
make  him  appear  as  a  traitor,  yet  it  stood  for  his 
emancipation  also,  for  it  was  about  to  drive  him 
into  exile.  With  what  amazing  suddenness  his 
decision  had  come  to  him?  It  is  only  over  the 
things  which  end  in  nothingness  and  futility  that 
one  dreams  and  dallies.  .  .  .  To-morrow  he 
would  leave  Ireland.  It  was  Mirandolina  Con- 
way  and  not  Kathleen-ni-Houlihan  who  had 
finally  gathered  him  to  herself.  Yet  even  now, 
in  the  moment  of  his  great  decision,  was  his  mind 
curiously  torn.  He  desired  to  think  of  Ireland 
still,  of  all  that  was  olden  and  beautiful  in  Ire- 
land, as  a  rich  memory,  in  whatever  place  he 
might  happen  to  be.  But  there  must  be  an  end 
to  all  the  waste  and  wandering  of  his  mind. 
There  was  something  more  in  a  man's  life  but  his 
country.  .  .  .  There  would  be  Mirandolina 
now,  his  wife,  his  good  comrade,  the  grander  part 


EXODUS  257 

of  himself,  as  well  as  his  mother  and  sister  still. 
He  would  have  to  be  a  realist,  dealing  only  with 
facts,  in  whatever  country  he  was  going  to  and  it 
was  part  of  the  irony  of  things  that  he  could  not 
be  this  same  realist  in  his  own  country.  Because 
to  be  such  as  he  had  vaguely  seen  it  through  his 
own  experience,  stood  almost  as  a  blasphemy  of 
the  very  soul  which  his  mother  Ireland  had  given 
him.  To  be  an  idealist  to  the  full,  his  head  en- 
circled by  a  crown  of  stars  against  a  mist  of 
dreaming,  as  he  had  seen  that  condition  mirrored 
in  the  mind  of  Connor  Carberry.  .  .  .  Ah,  no, 
ah,  no,  indeed.  .  .  .  Had  he  not  already  drunk 
himself  almost  to  destruction  out  of  that  pool  of 
sadness  ?  Perhaps,  after  all,  his  very  defeat  rep- 
resented the  most  enduring  triumph  that  could 
have  come.  ...  It  seemed  to  promise  the  perfect 
realisation  of  himself  as  Mirandolina  saw  him, 
or  as  she  hoped  to  make  him  when  she  had  res- 
cued him  finally  from  his  dreaming.  .  .  . 
There  could  be  no  mistake  about  his  salvation 
any  more,  for  now  they  were  howling  madly.  .  .  . 
He  hardly  realised  that  he  had  stumbled  away 
from  the  Hall  and  was  now  some  distance  down 
the  road  from  Ballycullen,  still  pursued  by  de- 
risive cries.  Now  he  was  passing  the  house  of 
Connor  Carberry.  It  was  the  house  which  had 
queerly  inspired  him  towards  the  madness  of  sin- 
cerity and  sacrifice  that  had  brought  him  to 


258      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

what  had  happened  this  night.  It  seemed  very 
strange  for  a  moment  that  Connor  Carberry  could 
have  no  further  influence  over  his  mind.  All  Con- 
nor's wild  raving  crushed  into  one  epic  night  would 
not  make  the  slightest  difference  in  the  outlook  of 
Michael,  although  now  probably,  at  this  very  mo- 
ment, he  was  raising  his  poor  old  broken  voice  for 
the  sake  of  the  man  who  was  his  friend.  .  .  . 
The  people  of  Ballycullen,  in  their  anger,  had 
come  between  them,  thus  preventing  the  saying  of 
a  last  good-bye.  But  he  felt  now,  as  he  passed 
the  place  around  which  the  shadows  were  gather- 
ing in,  that  he  must  go  up  to  the  window  and 
see  once  more  the  place,  the  very  stool,  in  fact, 
where  he  had  once  sat  listening  .  .  .  listen- 
ing. .  .  . 

He  drew  back  from  the  window  in  surprise,  for 
there  upon  what  had  been  "  his  "  stool  sat  Kevin 
Shanaghan,  who  of  late,  since  the  pubs  had  begun 
to  close  earlier,  was  in  the  habit  of  coming  out 
here  to  talk  with  Connor  Carberry.  It  must  be 
the  strange  evenings  they  were  having  together 
here.  Michael  smiled  as  he  thought  of  the  clash 
of  their  two  minds,  and  further  at  thought  of  the 
talks  it  must  lead  them  to  here  by  the  quenching 
fire  until  far  on  in  the  night.  .  .  .  This  very 
night  the  thing  that  was  himself  must  lead  them 
to  a  queer,  great  talk.  .  .  .  He  laughed  almost 
as  Kevin  Shanaghan  might  laugh,  and  moved 


EXODUS  259 

back  on  the  road  towards  Ballycullen.  .  .  . 
In  the  gathering  darkness  he  seemed  to 
lose  himself  and  to  wander  around  and  around 
for  a  great  while  in  a  circle  of  blindness  and 
of  the  pain  of  a  heart  that  had  been  wounded  by 
itself.  .  .  .  Gradually  he  heard  the  cries  that 
he  had  raised  up  in  his  people  dying  away  down 
all  the  roads  from  the  Hall.  Even  towards  re- 
mote quarters  of  the  parish,  Volunteers  were  now 
speeding  with  the  tidings  of  what  had  been  done 
to  Michael  Dempsey  this  night  in  Ballycullen. 
.  .  .  In  the  sharp  pang  of  his  thought  it  was 
thus  that  he  became  fixed  before  his  own  mind. 
This  was  exactly  all  that  he  meant  to  Ballycullen 
now,  he  who  had  striven  to  uplift  it,  he  who  had 
thought  of  it  with  noble  insistence  and  with  such 
dear  intimacy  in  his  dream  of  Ireland,  the 
brighter  microcosm  of  that  brighter  macrocosm. 
.  .  .  Oh,  God,  would  they  ever  see  that,  in 
loving  Ireland,  he  had  loved,  too,  his  native  vil- 
lage and  the  place  where  he  was  born?  His  eyes 
were  blinded  and  his  soul  was  scalded  by  his 
tears,  but  his  feet  were  turned  again,  although 
for  the  last  time,  towards  Ballycullen.  .  .  . 

His  native  village  looked  such  a  quiet,  decent 
place  now  that  it  was  so  late  in  the  night  and  there 
was  no  one  to  be  seen.  In  the  darkness,  too,  it 
always  appeared  to  have  hidden  away  much  of  its 
cruelty  and  baseness,  and  nearly  all  its  great 


260      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

uncharitableness.  ...  As  soon  as  he  came 
past  the  Hall,  that  place  which  had  made  itself 
so  dismally  significant  in  his  life,  he  saw  the 
only  light  still  remaining  in  Ballycullen,  and, 
as  a  curious  contradictory  symbol,  it  was  in  an 
upper  window  of  Thomas  Cooney's  .  .  .  But 
it  was  Mirandolina  who  was  in  there  now  by 
that  last  lit  lamp  he  might  ever  see  in  Ballycullen, 
preparing  herself  to  leave  Ballycullen  with  him, 
for  already  was  it  the  morrow  of  the  night  that 
had  passed.  ...  It  was  but  a  few  paces  now 
to  the  little  cottage  where  he  had  lived  so  long 
with  his  mother  and  sister.  What  he  was  going 
to  do  now  would  be  a  lonely  kind  of  thing  for 
them,  falling  down  another  darkness,  the  last,  per- 
haps, to  blind  them  with  a  full,  final  sorrow  on 
their  sad,  quiet  lives.  They  would  be  even  more 
fearful  of  Ballycullen  when  he  was  gone,  and 
they  would  live  still  more  remote  from  it  with  the 
memories,  as  they  would  fancy,  of  two  grand  men 
that  Ireland  and  Ballycullen  between  them  had 
broken,  a  husband  and  a  father,  a  son  and  a 
brother.  .  .  .  But  he  would  not  be  broken  and 
he  would  be  a  good  son  to  them  still.  He  might 
have  been  better,  but  all  the  love  of  his  heart  was 
a  real  thing  now.  .  .  . 

He  went  into  his  room  quietly  and  was  soon 
making  preparations  for  the  journey.  Continu- 
ally was  he  coming  upon  some  book  or  paper  or 


EXODUS  261 

manuscript  which  touched  him  with  some  mem- 
ory of  the  life  out  of  which  he  was  passing.  .  .  . 
All  the  seditious  literature  he  had  gathered  into 
this  place  seemed  so  meaningless  now.  It  did 
not  appear  even  worth  burning  as  a  precaution 
against  a  search  of  the  place  for  "  stuff "  by  the 
Sergeant  after  he  was  gone.  But  there  was  some- 
thing which,  to  cleanse  his  conscience,  he  must 
burn,  just  as  he  had  burned  his  plans  for  a  rising 
here  in  this  very  room.  It  was  the  manuscript  of 
the  scheme  he  had  sketched  out  so  recently  of 
uniting  the  country  in  the  grip  and  consistence  of 
a  powerful  and  sensible  plan.  How  futile  the 
very  thought  of  this  seemed  now?  His  plan  for 
a  rebellion  had  been  justified  to  some  extent  by 
the  rising  of  Easter,  1916.  But  this!  Lord  God 
Almighty !  And  to  think  that  the  mad  conversa- 
tion between  Connor  Carberry  and  Kevin  Shan- 
aghan  was  going  on  even  now  in  the  little  house 
from  which  he  had  drawn  a  portion  of  his  in- 
spiration, wild  thing  that  it  all  must  have  been 
to  result  only  in  this.  ...  A  madman  and  a 
fool,  as  they  called  them  in  Ballycullen,  were  still 
fighting  out  the  puzzle  of  Ballycullen  between 
them.  ...  In  a  moment  of  stark  conscious- 
ness he  stopped  in  his  thought  to  picture  them 
together,  almost  to  listen.  .  .  .  In  the  poignant 
calm  of  the  summer  night  he  seemed  to  hear, 
borne  on  the  rich  wonder  of  the  stillness,  the  glad- 


262      THE  CLANKING  OF  CHAINS 

some  ring  of  the  fool's  wise  laughter;  he  almost 
saw  the  sane  sincerity  of  the  madman's  noble, 
burning  eyes.  .  .  . 

And  why  were  they  wasting  wnat  strength  of 
mind  and  body  still  remained  from  their  broken 
years  in  talking  of  what  had  just  befallen  him, 
and  then  of  Ireland,  until  almost  the  early  dawn 
of  the  summer  morning  ?  Why,  only  because  they 
must  still  be  a  fool  and  a  madman  to  Ballycullen, 
for  it  was  thus,  it  seemed,  that  the  place  of  their 
birth  would  fix  them  eternally.  ...  He  was 
breaking  away  and  they  would  remember  him  as 
an  informer.  .  .  .  Ah,  well,  who  knew?  But 
he  must  burn  the  manuscript  anyhow.  Did  this 
remain  it  might  come  through  chance  to  prove  his 
sincerity.  And  he  did  not  want  that ;  he  did  not 
want  anything  from  them  now.  .  .  . 

As  the  torn  pages  flickered  into  ashes  in  the 
grate  he  felt  somehow  that  this  was  no  doleful 
act  of  renunciation  and  that  none  of  the  ashes  of 
his  soul  commingled  with  the  dust  of  all  his 
dreaming  for  love  of  Ireland.  .  .  . 

Mirandolina  would  be  ready  now  .  .  .  and 
it  was  a  wide,  wide  world.  .  .  . 

The  End. 


BY    BRINSLEY     MACNAMARA. 


THE    VALLEY     OF     THE    SQUINTING 
WINDOWS.      A  Novel.      12mo.  Cloth. 

$1.75  net. 

SOME  OPINIONS  OF  THE  PRESS. 

"  We  are  introduced  to  a  talent  that  almost  at  once  stamps 
itself  upon  our  minds  as  a  new  force  to  be  reckoned  with. 
.  .  .  '  The  Valley  of  the  Squinting  Windows '  is  a  notable 
piece  of  fiction,  all  the  more  so  for  its  being  a  maiden  effort. 
On  the  strength  of  this  performance  it  will  be  worth  while 
to  watch  for  the  name  of  Brinsley  MacNamara  upon  forth- 
coming novels.  One  has  the  feeling  that  he  will  accomplish 
things  of  more  than  passing  value. — Boston  Transcript. 

"The  story  inevitably  reminds  one  of  Hardy." — New  York 
Literary  Digest. 

"  Watch  Brinsley  MacNamara.  A  man  who  can  produce 
a  first  novel  of  such  power  and  depth  .  .  .  has  it  in  him  to 
attain  rank.  The  volume  is  no  more  at  bottom  an  attack  upon 
Ireland  than  it  is  upon  the  Fiji  Islands.  It  exposes  the  cor- 
roding gossip  of  a  small  village.  The  beauty  of  the  book 
lies  in  its  study  of  gossip.  Therein  it  is  universal.  And 
therein  it  commands  the  attention  of  all  who  are  devoted  to 
the  better  type  of  novel." — The  Stratford  Journal. 

"  An  unusual  and  unusually  fine  novel  of  Irish  peasant  life, 
very  much  like  what  Synge  might  have  written  had  he  created 
a  novel,  or  such  a  book  as  George  Birmingham  might  have 
achieved  had  George  a  mind  above  buffoonery." — Chicago 

News. 

"...  The  story  is  as  strong,  in  its  way,  as  some  of  the 
Synge  plays  themselves,  and  will  haunt  everyone  who  reads 
it  as  long  as  '  Riders  to  the  Sea.' " — New  York  Sun. 


PRESS    OPINIONS    ON    "THE     VALLEY    OF    THE 
SQUINTING  WINDOWS"  (continued). 

'  The  Valley  of  the  Squinting  Windows '  is  essentially 
Irish  in  tone  and  typically  Irish  in  setting.  Only  in  the  Green 
Island  could  this  strange  drama,  with  its  uncanny  atmosphere 
of  the  supernatural,  be  appropriately  placed." — Philadelphia 
Press. 

"  This  book  is  at  the  other  end  of  literature  from  Birming- 
ham or  James  Stephens  or  Yeats,  but  it  is  literature  sincere 
and  faithful  to  its  point  of  view,  and  it  deserves  a  reading 
by  those  who  would  understand  the  perplexing  Irish  question." 
^-Brooklyn  Daily  Eagle. 

"  Good  novels,  combining  both  dramatic  interest  and  literary 
excellence,  are  not  so  common  that  anyone  can  afford  to  miss 
'  The  Valley  of  the  Squinting  Windows.' — New  York  Globe. 

"  It  is  a  true  work  of  art." — St.  Louis  Mirror. 

"  Neither  verbose  nor  exaggerated.  Evokes  by  its  incisive- 
ness  an  emphasis  that  cannot  be  escaped.  As  a  contribution 
to  this  new  Irish  literary  movement,  which  promises  to  rival 
the  Russian  school,  Mr.  MacNamara's  book  will  enjoy  high 
place." — Pittsburg  Dispatch. 

"A  novel  of  undeniable  power." — San  Francisco  Argonaut. 

"The  style  is  good,  the  descriptions  are  many  of  them  well 
done,  the  dialogue  is  natural,  and  the  characters  real  people, 
albeit  extremely  objectionable  ones.  The  effect  of  the  malig- 
nant power  of  the  valley,  a  power  as  pervasive  and  insidious 
as  some  vile  maisma,  is  excellently  depicted." — N.  Y.  Times. 

" '  The  Valley  of  the  Squinting  Windows '  is  a  peculiarly 
unpleasant  story,  though  admirably  well  told." — Baltimore 
Sun. 

" '  The  Valley  of  the  Squinting  Windows '  is  an  epic  of 
meaning,  an  interesting  piece  of  pessimistic  realism,  Hardy- 
esque  in  effect." — The  Dial. 

"No  one  can  afford  to  miss  'The  Valley  of  the  Squinting 
Windows.'  It  is  the  best  novel  of  Irish  life  since  Patrick 
McGill's  '  The  Rat-Pit.'  "—New  York  Evening  Globe. 

" '  The  Valley  of  the  Squinting  Windows  '  approaches  the 
work  of  Synge  in  its  haunting  artistry  of  matter.  It  is  a 
gray,  hard  book  in  matter  ^which  is  curiously  warm  and  colorful 
in  manner." — Chicago  Tribune. 


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